Making progress... maybe?

Had my one month appointment on friday, it has been 8 weeks since the implant was turned on.

good and bad news from this one though...

ear infection is bad. very bad. it caused two of my electronodes or whatyoumightcallit... to malfunction and now i'm left with 22... But i have to stop myself and try to explain this. Inside my cochlea there is a wire going through it with like 24 dots on it, those are electrinodes or whatmightyoucallit. and they help stimul

ate the nerves in that spot and make my hearing work. according to my doctor, i only need 8 of them to work in order for my implant to work. they put 24 in total... now i have 22 due to the ear infection kinda messing up 2 of them and making them malfunctioning... they may fix itself by the time i go back to visit in december but who knows. It's not anything to worry about according to mark, so i'm not worried.

here's a picture to try to show it better.

it is kind of like that... just ignore the numbers but this is a cochlea with a wire through it like mine... and i think you can kind of get what i am saying from the picture i hope.

Anyways, that was the kinda bad news... and i have a little more. We did our usual testing, and he said that my implant's result from the testing is still stable... not getting worse or better. But i kinda of knew i would get that result due to how busy i was with school this past month and not having any time to really focus on my training of the listening skills in my right ear. HOWEVER, i have good news from that testing also! Last time, back in august, we did a test where it's a man's voice on a tape saying 'ready?' 'book' or some random word and I am supposed to repeat back whatever that word was.... last time with that test, using both my hearing aid and the implant i got 5% of the words correct... kind of pathetic. BUT this time, i got 25% correct!! So it's obvious that I am improving using both ears and that my brain is liking this!

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of my appointment, and the next one is not until winter break so I can just relax and get through this semester aiming for the stars with my education. =)

I don't feel like saying much more right now... quite tired and got to get ready for the pats game soon! WOO!

until next time,

-Annie