concernedmom
10-Year Member
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2006
- Messages
- 16
My son is applying to West Point and ROTC Scholarship. He had tubes in both ears at 7 months old. At 6 years, we found that he had a mild-moderate conductive hearing loss in right ear. He has never had any issues with left ear. We were advised that the conductive hearing loss could be corrected with surgery, but should wait until he was a little older. My husband is active duty, and audiology tests were done at an Army Hospital 2 years ago, when our son was 14. He was given the option to have the stapedectomy performed. It had never caused speech or learning disabilities (in fact, he has partcipated in sports, Boy Scouts, Gifted Program, Band, etc), but was advised that he was a very good candidate to possibly restore his hearing to the normal range. The stapedectomy was performed in July 2004 at the Army Hospital. He had audiology tests done 6 weeks after and 6 months after the surgery, showing that his hearing was restored to the normal range, with only slight difficulty in the high frequency range (4000 and 6000). His recent DODMERB audiology test showed similar results as the March 2005 test, with his worst being a 50 in the 6000 range on the right ear. We were told that the test is done with a single soundproof barrier, rather than a double soundproof, which can raise the score slightly (although this was not noted on the report). We have moved overseas since the surgery, so these audiology results were not done in the same facility. I know that I have read that any surgery of the inner/middle ear will disqualify the candidate, but was just wondering if this is waiverable for ROTC or West Point. Thank you for your help.