My last appointment was March 11th, and at this point everything is just staying stable... no new drastic changes. The programs that I have on my remote are the same basic ones, where I have two noise, one focus, and one everyday. They are designed for different types of environments, but the one I use the most is my noise program, it is the most comfortable one for me. I feel like I have not even talked about the remote that I have with my implant ever! Here's a picture of what it looks like:
I pulled up the image that has the labeling of what everything is on it so you have an idea of what it does for me. It's really handy to know the status of the implant through the remote rather than trying to use the controls on the implant itself, which are just two buttons and beeping noises to indicate what program I am on... but anyways I just plugged it into the computer to charge, and checked my volume on all of the programs... I'm maxed out at 10 on all of them... So basically at this point now, I am just working on getting familiar with sounds and voices rather than improving my noise range and stuff like that which was what was being done at the previous appointments.
But if you look at the remote, you can see the different colors indicate different programs, and the one I currently like the best and is using pretty much all of the time is the orange one: noise. I prefer that because it is more focused down in my environment and eliminates a lot of environmental sounds that are annoying and not really necessary for me to hear all the time, it's still there usually but quietened down. The focus (green) program is the more focused program, ideal for one on one conversations in a noisy environment, and you would have the person in front of you's voice made louder by the program to be able to understand better.
The everyday (blue) is the everyday... haha its just everything, no adjustment of softening the environment sounds or amplifying the speaker's voices and stuff like that. It's the sounds just as they are in my head. Sometimes it's nice, sometimes I just get sick of it, and use the noise program.
Anyways, not much news to report on my implant progress... everything is really just stable now and probably will stay this way for the rest of my life. Everyone has hopes for me to get better at hearing what people are saying, and I hope so too. but my expectations are not high because I do not want to disappoint myself if I can never reach my goals of understanding people without the use of lipreading... However I do have some good news on my next appointment, which should be 4-6 months from now, I'll be seeing Mark for the usual stuff and he will also be running tests on my hearing aid side too, since he's now my official audiologist since i got the implant. The other thing I want to mention is that I will also be seeing a speech language pathologist to help with my listening skills at that appointment too! About time I say!
My mom came with me to the appointment, and of course she frustrates me because when Mark asks me questions, she doesn't believe my answers sometimes, but she isn't with me all the time, and has no idea really of my progress. I did realize something after my appointment on my way home that I am starting to feel more comfortable and familiar with sounds in my implant only, like turning off the hearing aid and just listening through the implant. I have noticed that having the hearing aid off does not throw me off anymore, there are times where I had the hearing aid in, but not realize that I forgot to turn it on in the morning and just seem to do fine without the hearing aid. The level of understanding for me is increasing in my opinion, but it does not seem to be reflected when I take those tests in the booth. I kind of feel like it depends on what time of the day I take those tests, if it's morning time, I feel sluggish and don't seem to catch it that good... midday seems to be best for me. So next appointment has to be midday =P
Actually in class on tuesday, we usually have people just calling out terms to be written on the board for review terms. I always sit in the front row and usually just write down what's on the board, but I noticed that I was hearing the terms from behind me and understanding them and writing them down before the writer put them on the board. It was a good moment to realize that I am managing okay to understand people in class, and this is a large class... about a hundred of us or so.
Um... that's all I feel like talking about right now. It would be helpful if people commented on the post with any kind of question or topic they would like me to touch upon in my blog. But other than that, until next time... who knows when that will be?!
-Annie
