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

Ears

I feel like my ears are not able to handle all the stress and busy-ness of life. At this moment I feel like I managed to get an ear infection in my left ear which is my hearing aid ear... I certainly hope this is not the case. I hope I can somehow make it through the rest of the year in ideal ear/hearing conditions.

More about my cochlear implant though, I've noticed that I tend to focus a lot more on the background noises, for example right now the vacuuming in the hallway is really annoying. I definitely feel like I have a mild hearing loss in my right ear though because last night I was just lying down in my bed and I kept hearing everything in my right ear but not too much in my left... There is a considerable difference in sounds between the ears. It's tricky trying to learn how to listen in my right ear because the noises are much different than what I hear in my left (hearing aid) ear. I feel like I am hearing two different things when really they are the same thing just sounds different in each ear. However it is useful to know the sound in my left ear as a way to figure out the new "sound" in my right ear. Like if I hear the microwave whirring in my left ear, I can figure out what it sounds like in my right... I usually shut off the hearing aid and listen to the sound that I already identified with my left ear with my cochlear implant in order to know what it is and remember it for the future.

I have been getting comments from people saying that they have noticed a big change in how I communicate with people, like I am understanding more without looking at them and speak more clearly now. So mostly positive aspects of getting the implant for me, only negatives have been that it's a lot of work to learn everything especially at my age right now and how much I have going on in my life. Like what anonymous commenter said a few posts ago... it will all get better... I still don't believe that person. But I am keeping a positive spirit about everything. =)

Later,

off to do my homework.

-Annie

No life

So ever since getting to college,

I've had no free time to even think about my ears... and yet they're holding up somehow through all of my day of listening to teachers and customers at my job. etc.

But it's obvious that it's been a lot of work for me.... so obvious because I managed to get an ear infection in the ear... my cochlear implant side. That's a problem. A big mean problem.... although i do not have hearing in that ear canal itself, it still could affect the implant in some way and I am crossing my fingers that it turns out to be okay. I took ten days of medication for my ear infection... it still feels like I have one so i'm worried. Hopefully Smullen can help out when i see her on friday.

Friday is my 2 months in, follow up appointment. I have no expectations for this appointment with Mark, however I do feel like I am doing better with the implant than with my previous hearing aid, so I am quite pleased. Hopefully I'll find the time to update this after my appointment on friday! Time is very constricted as of now... I only have free time now due to my frustration with my printer and is trying to resolve that...

Anyways...

I cannot remember anything else that's important for people to know about my deaf-abilities slash my cochlear implants slash my life.

AKA. my life is nonexistent due to homework and classes... all for the future I suppose!

Until next time,

Annie

One Month Update

Long overdue update,

I last went to see my audiologist again on August 16th, and the outcome of that appointment was disappointment for myself, and maybe for everyone else around me.

The reason I say disappointment is because I am not making as much progress in my listening skills as I should be expected to do. I did this to myself though due to my thought process of how to develop my listening skills. Instead of listening to my audiologist in how he says that I should be practicing listening an hour a day, by watching tv with captions, having my mom read something outloud to me and i read along, etc. I did not do this often during my first month of having the implant on, and because of that, I have not improved in my listening skills. I am still hearing everything and is stable compared to the hearing aids. But I do hear things like a person with a mild hearing loss, so that has changed but I really still have no idea what each sound is.

Because of my lack of practice, my audiologist isn't quite pleased and has requested me to come back again in a month... So now I have to make a goal and a habit to practice listening some more and go back to see him hearing damn more than last time.

I often worry about how well I am doing and is pretty much constantly anxious that I am not hearing as much as I should be. Like last night, I kept getting worried thinking that I wasn't hearing voices etc. My implant needs a lot of maintenance it seems like, from all the constant moving about I do, and the weather is pretty harsh on it. I have to constantly check to make sure the battery is working, my coil is not twisted and who knows what else. It's just a lot of work with it, and because of that I forget about my hearing aid in my left ear. For nearly 2 weeks, it was plugged up with wax and I wasn't hearing as much as I could be and I just discovered the culprit of that issue today. I am pretty much losing my head with all of this.

You could say that I am in a low place right now with this progress. This entire journey is a lot of ups and downs, and I don't know what more I can say about this right now.

I feel quite scattered in my thoughts right now, so maybe this vacation can help me collect my thoughts and create a better post for people. I have been told by a lot of people that they love reading this blog, but have the problem of not being able to post a comment, so I do not know what the issue is. If you would like to contact me to learn more, you may email me at: a.cartier3@gmail.com I am open to anything anybody has to say and will do my best to answer any emails in a timely fashion.

Until next time,

-Anna

Picture

So i thought i'll just put up a picture of what the implant looks like on my head.

There isn't much new things to report on my progress right now. Still hating the birds but loving hearing the new sounds sometimes even though I have no idea what they are.

But here you go people,

a lovely picture of my head.

-Annie

p.s. I'm hearing people walking around the libary right now. Kind of weird.

10 days in.

So, time to update once again.

At this point, it's been ten days since the implant was turned on. I went in for an appointment at the 5 day mark. That went well. I had to undergo the booth testing which is my least favorite thing ever to do. Basically, for hearing tests you go into this sound-proof booth with a glass wall dividing you from the audiologist and all the machines. In the room that I am in is basically a chair and speakers. I usually listen to the speakers through my hearing aids, or FM, or the implant or even nothing too. During that day, we primarily focused on how well I am doing with the implant alone in my right ear. The first test he did was have me listen for beeping sounds and raising my hand when I heard them. It's often very quiet beeps or a different range of them, from low frequency to high frequency. I cannot really hear high frequency/pitch sounds right now since that has not really been enabled on my program for the implant. But I am hearing a few.

The second test he did was my absolute least favorite thing ever to do. I always have a hard time with it because I hear it but I have a hard time figuring out what I just heard in my head. Also it is a man's voice on a tape recorder... not my audiologist's. It goes like this: "ready" "ball"... so i usually know the word ready to heart by the end of the tape. But I am supposed to repeat back the word after "ready" and it's tough for me. I even get to the point where I give up and just say random words which is kind of a bad idea... either that or i really think i am hearing the same word over and over... specifically in this section i hear 'push' a lot... i think. haha. So i did this test with the implant alone, then again with my hearing aid which made it a bit easier for me i think.

After all those testing, my audiologist tells me that based on the beeping tests, I am hearing at the level of a person with a mild hearing loss which is quite amazing! But with the results of the 2nd test, I am still pretty stable of what I was hearing before the surgery, however this is good due that I did not lose any hearing or progress. I just have to practice more and listen more and figure out what everything is. My audiologist was pleased with my progress for 5 days of using the implants and says I'm on the right track with it.

Now, my own personal view of my progress has been up and down a lot. Some days, I feel like I am not really hearing as much as I should. While other days I am just being driven crazy by sounds! It's tough going in my head because I tend not to be very patient with progress and get tired easily with everything. So it's a trying experience for me. However I do discover something new that I can hear every day, like I started hearing the tea kettle whistling yesterday and again today. Today I am noticing the birds a lot which is extremely annoying... it's like being repeated in my head right now, like a bad song going over and over.

I do notice more sounds though with the implant, and I feel like I am talking better and holding conversations a bit better but it is still a process to go through. My mom said that she has noticed that I am speaking better than usual and maybe it's because I am actually hearing myself? Also, I can finally hear the sound 's' 'sh' 'ch' which were always tough sounds for me to hear, and I've actually never really heard the 's' sound before which is remarkable for me to hear now! =)

Next appointment for me is in August at the one month mark, so we'll see how that goes then... probably will not update this until then but who knows.

-Annie

Time flies

Okay, July 16th has come and gone.

That was the date of turning on my implant. And I am still not sure if it was successful... =/ makes me quite worried.

But anyways, I'll tell you about how the day went. Headed to the hosptial in the morning, and waited till my audiologist got me.

He started off by checking with me if everything went well and etc etc. They did. =)

And we went right to it... after tons of opening boxes and taking the plastic off of individual containers and numerous remarks saying 'why are they destroying the environment with all this plastic!?' we finally get my device out and put together. He did not turn it on right away and had to do some tests. The first test was tough for me, since it was pretty much turned on and was testing to make sure all of the individual nodes inside my cochlear on the wire thingy was functioning. It was a hard test on my head because it just sounded like really strong sensations being shocked into my head. Not like a static shock, but like a sound shock. After a while my whole head was booming and my heart started racing. I was kind of freaking out at that point because I thought that was what I was hearing and it wasn't anything specifc. Finally he stopped that after I was in a lot of pain via my head.
The second test was a test of beeping. I basically had to listen for beeping at different tones, most were soft to figure out how quiet I could hear things. I tried my best with it but after a while I felt like I wasn't hearing anything and making it up in my head.

After he did that, he said that he can turn it on and I'll hear what everyone's voices are like. He does... at first... I hear nothing. Just feeling a weird sensation. He tells me it's at a low volume and that he needs to increase it until i feel comfortable and can hear voices. Increasing... more and more... I barely hear anything. I'm mostly in shock at this point of how it is not what I was expecting at all. The sounds aren't the same as what I heard with a hearing aid.

I finally found a volume level that my head was comfortable with and could hear everyone talking in that small office. But at the same time, I really did not know what I was really hearing. The voices do sound cartoonish right now, and it's mad weird.

However now i have become worried that it is not working the way it's supposed to... like did i mess up on that second test and make myself think that I really was able to hear now? Over the course of 2 days since then, I feel like I am not really hearing anything. I have my hearing aid in the left ear helping me maintain some level of hearing that i am used to but if i have only the implant on... i can't really hear anything, just keep getting a weird sensation on my head from the magnet sending electrical currents to my cochlear/brain. I have been continuing to increase the volume and move through 4 programs that my audiologist set up for me to get used to a more normal level of functionality on the cochlear implant.

The only major difference that I have noticed is that I am hearing music more clearly now. Like I can actually pick out the moments when someone is singing, and I am trying to pick out the words but it's not so easy. Before the implants, I could only listen to music through it's beat and rhythm rather than the actual lyrics which i could never really hear.

Crossing my fingers at this point that this worry goes away quickly and I can improve slash get used to this implant quickly. If the worry doesn't go away quickly I probably will start to regret all of this and be in a terrible mood for days. So nobody wants that... =(

Anyways,
it's tough for me to describe all of it... like i cannot find the right words at all to make it make sense to everyone. Not even my mom understands what is really going on in my head right now. I hope I can find the words to describe it and will post a new blog when I figure it out.

Night ya'll,
-Annie