Surgery

As the result of this past full-day appointment on Feb 9th, I am a good candidate for the surgery and currently waiting to hear back from the board of whether i can get it.

They are meeting on March 5th, and i'm hoping my surgeon will call to schedule the surgery sometimes after that. I hope that i can get it done late may right after i get out of school and the entire surgery only takes 2-3 hours these days. I would be in and out in the same day and my doctor said that it is just a minor surgery and there are not that many risks associated with the operation. The only major risk is that i could lose facial nerves, but my surgeon said that she has never had that happen to her before and she's done over thousands of these surgeries.

There is one other major risk i am taking with this surgery and that is i will be losing all of the possibility to use a hearing aid in my left ear again after the surgery. I do not know why this happens, but that is what I have been told. There is a high chance of my surgery being a success though, so I don't have to worry about this risk, but it is a risk that I have to take if i want to improve my hearing instead of it going the other direction if i continue to use my hearing aids. I feel like if i continue to use my hearing aids, 10 years from now, i probably would hear less than i do now, and i already can't hear that much anyways!

Back to what will happen with the surgery, she will make an incision behind my ear, no shaving off my hair! and go underneath the skin to my skull, and shave the skull down in order to make room for the internal part of the cochlear which contains a magnet. Ya, i get a magnet in my head... which means i will set off the lovely airport security gates after this surgery... and i can never get a MRI but that's not the end of the world.

The recovery period takes a month, and during this time the internal part of the cochlear implant is not turned on and its just a time to allow my skin and skull to heal over. I will only be able to hear out of my right ear during this time through my hearing aids, so it will be quite weird and i probably will constantly remind people to talk to me on my right side... yay... at least i can still drive around. =)

At the end of the recovery period, I will be going back to the hospital to get the external part put on, and programmed and I will finally hear once again! They keep telling me that i should expect to hear many new things, and the sound quality is going to be different than what i hear now. I have no idea what to expect after it's turned on, and the best part of it... it might be turned on before i go camping in boothbay harbor, maine, on the ocean and i might actually hear the ocean more clearly. I think that would be the most amazing sound to really hear or the barefoot steps across the hardwood floor or the wind whistling. I can kind of hear those things already, but with the cochlear implants, it should be more clearer and more definite of a sound ingrained into my brain.

Feel free to leave any questions or things you wonder about that i can answer for you.

-Annie