Michael Corretger: Hearing is believing

Like a lot of the kids we see at Schreiber, Michael has had a pretty rough start to life. His mother, Migdalia “Mickey” Malave, worked third shift at Lancaster General Hospital while she was pregnant. After Michael was born, she went back to work, and he stayed with a woman who offered day care services out of her home.

When Michael was about a year old, he started experiencing seizures. Mickey said they were afebrile seizures: She said he would look like he was daydreaming or zoning out.

He was also prone to ear infections. It turned out the ear infections would cause fevers, which would then often trigger the seizures.

Mickey said she quit her job so she could devote more time to taking care of Michael, running him to doctor visits or having tests done.

“And I needed to find a new day care,” Mickey said. “She was very nice, but she wasn’t set up to take care of him the way he needed.”

She worked through a long list of interviews with different centers before she came to Schreiber and met with Christina Kalyan at Circle of Friends.

“I would be talking and asking questions and everything would be fine, and then I’d mention Michael’s seizures, and I’d get this look,” Mickey said, recalling her experiences with other centers. “When I talked with Christina, she said, ‘What kind of seizures?’ She was the only one to ask that. Then I got the tour and saw everything you do here, and I was, like, yes this is the place.”
She was even more sure about her choice when Christina started talking to her about Michael.

“My son was 13, 14 months old, and he couldn’t say ‘Mom’; that didn’t seem right,” said Mickey, who has two older daughters, Monique, 14, and Jasmine, 13. “I had him in for a hearing test, and they said he was fine. But Christina noticed he couldn’t hear. She said, ‘You have to be his advocate. Insurance will cover this if you take him to an ENT. Get him tested again.’ I did, and they found he had the fluid building up in his ears and wasn’t hearing well.”

Michael is 3 (and turns 4 in August), and he’s finally starting to turn some corners. He underwent surgery in May at Lancaster General to put tubes in his ears to clear the fluid buildup from the infections and restore his hearing. While they did that, doctors also took out his tonsils to relieve sleep apnea.

He receives speech therapy at Schreiber to help him overcome the speech delay caused by his hearing impairment, and he’s on medicine to help control the seizures.

All of that means he’s sleeping better, hearing better and speaking better. Mickey couldn’t be more happy with Michael’s progress at Schreiber.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” she said. “I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

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Help us to provide therapy and educational services for children like Michael. Visit our DonateNow page here and set up a recurring gift. Your $10 monthly gift will pay for one half-hour of therapy or keep Circle of Friends stocked with blankets for the babies in our new infant care room. Questions? Call the Financial Development Office at 717-393-0425 ext. 105.