The beginning

This is my first entry on this blog...

I decided that i should record my journey of getting cochlear implants and the entire process of hoping to get better hearing skills.

I should start this out by telling more about myself. I am Anna, and currently 20 years old. I just started as a freshman in college this past year and that was a huge change for me. The transition from high school to college was a lot harder than i thought it was going to be, but i am finally getting the hang of the college life now, maybe.

Now time for some history, my favorite subject ever! I was born deaf in 1990 before they even did testing for hearing when the babies are born... so because of that my parents did not figure out that i was deaf until 19 months old. The doctors diagnosed me with a severe to profound hearing loss and fitted me with hearing aids. I have worn hearing aids my entire life, and never really considered cochlear implants until now.

I feel like there is so much more to explain about my entire process thus far, I already started the process of getting evaluated and meeting with the entire team at the hospital. My doctor is Jennifer Smullen, and I hear so many good things about her and her experience so I am feeling more confident about that this will be a success. One of the main reasons that i decided that now was the time, rather than sooner or later was because I am in the mode of changes and feel like college could be so much better with improved hearing.

The plan would be to have my cochlear implants done on my left ear. Over the years, my hearing loss has been fairly stable, and as of right now if you sat in a soundproof booth and listened to a tape of a man saying words. Just listening, its a deep voice saying "ready? say 'ball'" and it goes on and on with tons of one syllabus words. I have to repeat those words the best that i can hear it or at least the sounds. I have always hated doing these tests, but its the way they measure how much i can actually understand. My most recent test that is recorded stated that i only managed to get about 5% of the words correct using my left ear then 32% with my right ear. This is done with hearing aids... and with no visual at all, so now you can see how much i rely on lip reading to understand people and why i hate phones with a passion.

On February 9th, i went into Boston to go for a full day appointment at the MEEI and meet with numerous people. My day started out with this man named Dr. Eddington who is in a way a consultant and he works on the actual cochlear implants trying to improve them and make it more effective. I thought that was the most pointless part of my day, but then from there i went to meet with the social worker, Pat. She was also a hard of hearing woman and tried to introduce me to new communities of people who are like me. I got quite frustrated with her due to how I felt like she was treating me like I knew nothing about being deaf and that it was a new thing for me. I tried to be nice to her, but it was kind of frustrating. She asked me a lot of questions about my life and was checking to see if i was psychologically stable for this kind of procedure. I think I passed alright.

My favorite part of the whole day was meeting with my new audiologist, Mark Campbell who also turns out to be deaf like me and currently has cochlear implants in one of his ear and a hearing aid in the other ear. It was really nice to actually have an audiologist who can relate to what i am going through and understand how hard it is to listen and how much of a difference our hearing is compared to the normal human being's ears. I did more hearing tests, including the one where i listened to the tape of words. Before i did that test, i had to do a test where they put headphones on my actual hearing nerves part which is behind your ear and listen for a beep, no hearing aids involved. It's always weird doing it because i can feel the vibration too but i have to listen for a beep in order to raise my hand when i hear it. Also those headphones kinda hurt... haha.

After all of those testings, I met with him and learned more about what cochlear implants are and understand the pro and cons of them, and i had a choice between Advanced Bionics and Nucleus 5 cochlear implants. What they look like its like a hearing aid, the part that goes behind my ear, but nothing goes into my ear canal, then from that part of the device is a wire with a circler piece on the end of it, it is about the size of a half dollar and would go onto the back part of my head. The surgery is to put in the actual device that sends electronodes to my auditory nerves and stimulate them to listen and receive sounds. Right now, hearing aids just amplifies the sounds into my ear canal, does not actually really work my auditory nerves all that much. Over time the method of doing that in my ears is not as effective and I find myself struggling more to hear and understand, which is why I am getting the cochlear implants in hopes of hearing better. I know I will never have normal hearing like everyone else, but i hope to get something decent. The audiologists say that my ability to hear words without visual cues should improve from 5% to about 40% to 50% with the cochlear implants.

I feel like this is a long post, but there is a lot to tell, and more will come later.

-Anna