I'm All Ears

click to view the back cover closer so you can see what a famous author wrote about our book!!!!

Finally, after I've waited for months and months (I'm no good at secrets!) I can proudly release a book I wrote with an outstanding speech-language pathologist who worked with both of my children. She actually started working with Gage when he was four months old!! Over the years, she and I have become friends. I called her out of the blue one day and said "hey, we need to write a book for parents of children newly diagnosed with hearing loss, and for the people who work with those kids." I told her specifically, I wanted it to be easy to read, I wanted it to sound like it was coming from a mother's mouth and not professionals with big words that people would have to look up in the dictionary (yes, I've left the doctor's office plenty of times when Gage was an infant, only to run home and look up what the heck we had just discussed!)
To my surprise, she said "oh yes, we should!" and we immediately got started. Here are a couple of excerpts from the book and you can click over to my second blog I'm All Ears book blog for other information. So thank you Tamara Harrison for your professional input and thank you for being a dedicated therapist, your passion is evident and as a parent I truly appreciate that! And thank you to my friend and sister-in-law Christie who did a fabulous job on these covers. She spent countless hours perfecting this (without complaining!) and she got it exactly as I had envisioned!

page 27
"Three hours had passed and not a word from the doctor. Four hours had passed and no word yet. Finally the door popped open yet again. This time it was a nurse. She came to us and asked us to come with her. The nurse said, 'The doctor wants to see you where it's more private.' I did not like the sound of that. My mind started racing. Is Gage alive? What happened during the surgery? Was this why it had taken so long?
A few minutes later the doctor walked into the small room. He seemed very disappointed...worried...distracted."

page 53 from Tamara's writings
"...The teacher shared that Gage was a great reader - he sounded out the words well, he got along with the others well, and he was eager to learn. The only problem she had with Gage was that he TALKED TOO MUCH! Isn't that fabulous? That's music to a speech pathologist's ear! The teacher also said that Gage paid attention better than anyone in the class and that GAGE WAS THE BEST LISTENER. The deaf kid in her class was the best listener!..."

I've been asked in the past to please give tissue warnings in some of my blog posts so for those of you who know us personally, this might touch your heart in the beginning so I do give a slight tissue warning for the first half of the book. I will note however that there are stories in there to make you laugh also! It's not intended to be a sad book, just a book of my travel from ignorance to advocacy on this road my children have led me on. It's been hard, it's been amazing, and it's taught me so much! I planned a perfect picnic but didn't consider the weather. Sometimes, it's just better to have your picnic despite the weather and I hope that this book will serve it's purpose...to help some family somewhere, know that they are not alone.