From: Kraig Warnemuende <ad6075@wayne.edu>

Date: Wed Mar 24, 2004 2:23:53 PM America/Detroit

To: Kraig Warnemuende <ad6075@wayne.edu>

Subject: 03-24-04 December Update from Kraig, Loren and Keren

So! Second installment and first real update of the week! December....

Hmmm....ya know, that's a long time ago! What happened?

We started with the typical Christmas rush--plans, etc. fell into place. It was a small Christmas for us, as Kraig's folks couldn't come home from Mali this year, and his brother Kevin with wife Mandie and daughter Abby couldn't come up either. We were bummed about that partly 'cause we were looking forward to having the cousins together again to get some more cute pictures. Not only that, but my entire family was meeting up with our great-aunt Marge and cousin Beth down in Tennessee and Kraig, Keren and I couldn't go there. Fortunately we had Kraig's brother Kris and his wife, Katrina, in town and also Kraig's sister Kat and her husband Ryan were able to come up from Texas. So we had some family! I also got to bake my very first turkey--not bad after being married over eight years!

As December wore on, it became increasingly clear that Kraig's Grandpa Warnemuende was not doing well. He'd been in and out of the hospital all fall and just before Christmas was diagnosed with a return of cancer that could no longer be treated. He started going down hill very quickly after that, and even though he'd been sick for so long his rapid turn for the worse came as a shock for the family. We were able to spend some special time with him and Grandma on Christmas day and New Year's Eve--two days when he was up and with the family.

We finished December with a new and significant piece of equipment for Keren--she got a hearing aid! We had more hearing tests done in early December which showed that her hearing loss (moderate/severe loss) was primarily due to conductive loss rather than neurological. This means that it is because of blockage and structural problems, not nerves, and as a result can be treated with a bone-conductive hearing aid (the sound vibrates through bone directly to her inner ear). The day we got the diagnosis, Keren's doctor tried out a loaner hearing aid on her--the results were amazing! Keren had been fussing and fussing (she wanted to sleep and we kept interrupting her), but when the doctor put the aid on her and said her name, Keren immediately went silent and her eyes got real big. She just stared at us with an expression of "What in the world is that???" To say the least, we went home with the aid and in January she got one of her own. She's continued to do well with it, and we've seen some marked improvement with her verbal sounds and responses to people talking..... She's also had it long enough, though, that's she's learning to ignore us again! Ah well! You should be able to see pictures of Keren's hearing aids (the loaner and then her own) on her new webpages--Christmas, then January. Please let us know if you can't find them!

Onward to January and a new year tomorrow....

Much love,

Loren for the gang