April 16: Day 2 of Digitial Hearing & Follow Up Appointment

So it seems that I'm a little behind already in my valiant attempt to keep everyone up to date on my progress... I've been distracted by all the things I need to get caught up on now that I've (somewhat) rejoined the world of the hearing. Here's a recap of my second day.

April 16th

Morning:
I woke up on Thursday eager to put on my new ear to see if anything was different from the day before. First thing I noticed, was that my voice sounded a little bit deeper than the day before. Of course, I was still really not liking this robot that was in my head...so I spent the morning talking out loud to myself. My dogs probably thought I was a little weird - but I was determined to get used to what "me" sounded like really hoping that the more I heard myself the faster I would start to sound "normal" or at least human! (sigh, its been another few days and I'm still a robot!).

As I was getting ready to head back to Baltimore for my appointment, I was definitely hearing more than just the day before. A couple of those sounds that I never noticed I could hear previously but now took such joy that I could today:

• My hair moving and the sound of the brush running through it.
• This one is a little strange...I could actually hear the make-up brush against my cheek while putting blush on my left side but not the right!
• Spritzing of perfume spraying out of the bottle.
  

While waiting for my dad to arrive to accompany me to my appointment, I got a little more bold. Andrea said I would definitely need more time before using the phone again, and so I wondered what I would be able to hear now. I called the recorded weather number on my cell phone and listed - although a robot was speaking, I could actually understand almost ALL of what was being said! I was ecstatic - I haven't been able to understand anything on my phone since October!!! Of course, this was a little different as I knew what type of words to listen for (anticipating conversation is what really helps a lot of hearing impaired persons understand people they are talking with) - I can tell I will definitely need more time following random conversations in general before gluing my cell back to my head! But I was very happy with my little baby step.

Appointment:
The follow-up appointment with Andrea was rather short - I was doing so well already that she said I would have quick appointments. I'm also going to brag and share that of her 300 or so patients, Andrea said only 2 others have done as well as me so soon!!

So what happened during this appointment? Well, Andrea did a little bit of tweaking to Chip and also added 4 programs to my remote (see photo from next posting, program buttons are the ones with the dots). The programs are: 1. regular (base line, general setting), 2. noisy places, 3. regular-louder (like turning up the volume), 4. noisy-louder.

I also had a baseline pure-tone hearing test. Basically, I sit in the sound booth and press a little button when I hear the tones. Andrea records the level for each frequency and plots it on a graph. My results were great and really surprising for me to see!

Cochlear implants do not allow a person to hear in the normal hearing range - the best it will allow is the mild hearing loss range. A non-hearing impaired person can hear every tone at 25 db or lower. A person is considered to have a hearing loss for any frequency measured louder than 25 db.

Before my surgery, I was completely in the profoundly deaf range. Just one full day after activation and I am in the mild hearing loss range!!! This does not yet mean I hear everything as a person with mild hearing loss would - that will take me several months at least. But the test showed that I am hearing all of the frequencies in that range. Big Smile! I really wanted to post what my audiogram looked like - but I'm having problems converting the Open Office graph on my computer (I don't have MS Office). Stay tuned - I'll post it as soon as I can figure out how!