Hearing Progress

My hearing is improving steadily. I wish I could pinpoint a time when I will be hearing well again, functioning normally, using the telephone, and listening to music. My best guess is April.

Quick Cochlear Implant Update

My comprehension of sound continues to get better with my CI. My next mapping is scheduled for Tuesday. I expect that the volume will be increased a bit and the clarity to improve. It will be a three month mapping, so I hope it is a good one.

Two Words, One for Each Ear

My right ear hearing made a big jump on Thursday. So much so, that I was hearing peoples voices with just my hearing aid. It’s all weird sounding and hard to make out, but I did an experiment.

I closed my eyes and asked Loaise, my wife, to say one name or another. I turned off my implant and listened and responded. I got it right!

I then turned off my hearing aid and my implant on. Eyes still closed, I listened and responded. I got that one right too!

So, I heard and understood a word with only my cochlear implant, and with only my hearing aid.

By the way, this was the first word I heard since going deaf on January 20th. I am ahead of schedule on getting my hearing back, when compared to my deafness in 2008.

Change Comes Slowly, But It Comes.

Some days I start to wonder if I am making progress at all. I listen and realize that without lip-reading or subtitles, I just can’t follow speech. I think, “Shouldn’t I be getting more of this by now?”

Then I realize, that it wasn’t long ago that I was happy be able to understand a word as I was lip-reading. It wasn’t long ago that I was surprised to hear a word I was reading on the subtitles.

The change over time in the sound of a cochlear implant is slow and almost impossible to notice. But every once in a while, you perceive something that you had not noticed before.

• I realized that I am asking people to repeat themselves less.
• I noticed that I am forgetting that I am deaf when I am alone, because background noises are almost normal now.
• I realized that my comprehension struggles now are becoming more related to volume than to clarity.

These are things you can’t notice from one moment to the next, but over time. The change comes slowly, but it comes.

It’s Like Character

As we strive to build our character, get rid of bad habits, develop new good ones, become more patient, speak more graciously, we don’t really see the change from one day to the next, but over time.

I can look back over my life in the last year and see clearly if I have become more like the person God intends for me to be, or if I have fallen back in to being just a product of my environment.

Granted, building character is a bit more active than waiting for clarity of hearing, but is a process that can not be rushed in any real sense. Well, with one major exception. The Bible says “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, all things have become new.”

The history of the world is full of stories of the rottenest scoundrels repenting and turning to Jesus. Instantly, they were changed.

Jesus cured the deaf he encountered instantly, too.

God is good.

I *Heard* That!

Lipstick

First, an analogy. If the sound of speech were received as handwritten notes, the sound of the speech I hear with the cochlear implant is like a note written in lipstick, rather than a pen. It’s thick, imprecise, and doesn’t fit the style guide of normal speech. Still, you can sometimes get bits of the message.

Conversations

I still rely on lip-reading, but I am finding myself feeling like I need my Cochlear Implant to understand. There is a lot of meaningful information coming in now, and some words… real words, in conversations.

The volume is still way to low for most things, though. Looking forward to getting that bumped up in the next mapping.

Recordings

I plugged the CI directly into my cellphone last night to practice listening. I put on Matthew Chapter 2. “Wha Bla Bla Pa Bla Wha Bla The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness, ‘Prepare th’ Wha Bla Bla Pa Bla Wha Bla”

What was that! I *heard* that! I did hear that!

I was able to get a word or two here and there as I listened. Still not enough for comprehension, but getting there. It is change I notice though. Good change.

Without My Cochlear Implant

When I take my CI off, I can now perceive some sound in my aided ear. If I clap my hands next to my ear, I hear it, faintly. When I scream, I hear myself, faintly. I think my hearing is coming back, a little at a time.

Next audiogram in a month.

Getting Closer to Understanding My Own Voice

I still don’t understand speech. If I am watching subtitles, I can kind of follow along. When I am lip-reading, the sound helps a little, sometimes. If someone is talking but I can’t see their face, there is no chance I will understand.

Last night, however, in the dark, while I was telling my son a bed time story, I could hear my voice and it sounded kind of funny. It was a voice though.

I am surprised, actually, at how these past couple of weeks have been sounding. When I was eleven years old and had gone suddenly deaf, I heard sounds similar to these when my hearing started coming back.

First, my voice was the sound of multiple voices that didn’t really come across very well. That was happening to me last week.

Then, there was a funny sounding voice that reminded me of a man inhaling helium. When I was eleven, I laughed at the sound of my own voice, probably to the point of being annoying to my family. That was the voice I heard my story in last night.

I wonder why it is this way?

The cochlear implant is still much different sounding than that natural hearing, much more garbled and noisy, but there is something about trying to hear speech that brings back memories.

I look forward to hearing again soon.

• Cochlear implant active for 95 days, now.
• Deaf again for 18 days, now.

Learning How This Thing Works

I had another appointment at the audiologist yesterday. We did an audiogram of settings 3 and 4 on my processor. I am going from memory, but this is about how they look.

X = program 3 and O = program 4

That is a measure of volume. This, evidently changes with mappings, and should improve. Clarity, on the other hand is all in my brain. That comes from me. So I am just waiting for it to get clear.

Yesterday, while watching a one-hour program on TV (Person of Interest), I caught 3 words. Each time, out of the noise, bang! A word I could hear and understand. Hopefully this will happen more and more frequently.

…

Oh, and by the way, to make a cool audiogram like this for free, go to http://www.hearingaidknow.com/audiogram-creator/

What I Can Hear, Now

I have been wearing a cochlear implant on my left ear for a little over two months. Up to this point I’d been bi-modal. That is two modes of hearing, a CI on one side and a hearing aid on the other. My hearing aid provided my primary hearing and I had been learning to hear with the implant as an auxiliary.

I knew that one day the CI would become my primary hearing. I did not think it would be so fast. Maybe this is just temporary. What ever the case, this changes my rehab strategy.

During the first month (and mapping), I couldn’t hear anything with it, except rain on the roof and a barking dog. Neither sounded anything close to normal and both were as quiet as a whisper. Everything was set low, due to my sensitivity to the stimulation.

During the second month (and mapping),  I could hear lots of noise, but nothing “real.” The blanging clanging whistling sounds enveloped everything. I could, on occasion and using a direct connection between the processor and cell phone, recognize a song and follow it. Words still escaped me.

Now, I have lost my hearing in my aided ear. I am dependent on my CI for all sound input. It is still mostly unclear garble with some recognizable sounds coming out.

Here is what I can identify. I will add an asterisk* to things that sound almost “right.”

• Knocking on wood or glass*
• Clapping hands*
• Pretty much any impact sound
• My son’s toy train
• Running water
• The toilet flushing
• That someone is talking
• Bird’s chirping (Though I am having lots of jungle-sound tinnitus, so I never know if it is real or imagined. Pretty sure the monkeys aren’t.)
• I can identify some songs
• I can follow some speech for short periods of time when the corresponding text is in front of me.

I get about 30% of my wife’s words right when I get her say a word in a category three times. For example, if I give her the category fruit, she might say, “Banana, banana, banana” I understand the word about 3 times in every ten exercises.

From Hard of Hearing to Deaf

When I had my cochlear implant surgery last year, it wasn’t a pressing need, but it was needed. My hearing, was good enough that I didn’t need the implant for communication, yet. But the progressive and repeating nature of my hearing loss, meant that one day I would need to rely on a cochlear implant.

The hearing loss has up until now, come in ten year intervals. I expected to be in my early forties when it happened again. The cochlear implant, by then would be functioning well and my quality of life would not diminish at the onset of my deafness.

As it happens I’ve lost my hearing again, and I am only in my third month of learning to hear with a cochlear implant. The CI now provides the only sounds I hear, other than tinnitus. I had been working my hearing rehab so that the cochlear implant would assist my hearing. Now it is my hearing.

I will have several observations here soon. But here are a few things going through my mind.

1. My hearing in my non-implanted ear will likely come back. It has before.
2. That hearing won’t be as strong as it was before.
3. Because of my reliance on my CI for sound information, things will probably happen a little faster.
4. Even though I can not understand speech and most things sound like noisy whistles and clanging cymbals, it is better than no sound input.
5. I will have to quit giving English lessons, at least for a while.
6. I will not have to quit training people to do participatory Bible studies or Bible storying, nor will I need to quit any other ministries of being a missionary.
7. I now have a good excuse to not talk on the phone.
8. CI Program 4 is definitely the best one I have. Forget 1 through 3.
9. I am having melodic tinnitus. I am hearing short random melodies, like the sound a cell phone makes to warn that the battery is low. Another one sounds like coffee brewing. (Maybe it’s my cochlea draining?)
10. I am glad to have this blog as a place to talk about all this.
11. I expect this current hardship to be temporary.

May good will and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be yours! – Steve

Missed Appointment

I arrived at my appointment with the audiologist today about 15 minutes early. As soon as I walked in she looked at me and said, “Your appointment was yesterday.”

I looked in my agenda, and I had Thursday, January 19th, 4:45 pm marked down. She looked in hers and had marked down Tuesday, January 17th, 4:45 pm. Oops.

How did that happen? Well, this was the first time that I pulled out my agenda and wrote down the appointment right there, instead of letting her write it down on an appointment card.

We miscommunicated.

Oh well. We rescheduled for Tuesday, January 24th at 5:45 pm, and I got it on an appointment card. At least I have another week to decide on which program is best for me right now.

Program Evaluations

In my last post I mentioned that I am trying out four programs this week to see which one we will build from going forward. Today I will post a little about programs 1 and 4.

Program 1 is a big step back with respect to volume. Nothing is loud enough. However, every sounds good and everything I hear is identifiable. But it is much too soft.

• Advantage: Amazing clarity
• Disadvantage: So soft, it is unhelpful.

Program 4 is loud, just like my previous settings. Still too loud but the balance is better. It is not terribly annoying like the previous settings. The volume seems to be higher than what I hear with my aided ear. Unfortunately, it is mostly whistle sounds.

• Advantage: Volume. I can hear things far away and things that are too quiet to normally hear.
• Disadvantage: It is mostly noise divorced from meaning. With good volume the clarity goes away.

Programs 2 and 3 are adjustments somewhere in the middle. I will try these two out for a couple of days and post a report here.

Four Programs

In my visit to the audiologist yesterday, I had some difficulty finding a good mapping. I related the fact that the last mapping was really too loud for comfort and so we took a step back. We adjusted the levels, and every time we created a map, it had an advantage and a major disadvantage.

So, what we decided to do was to insert four different programs. I will use each one for a day or so, and next week, we will decide which of the four is the best choice. From there we will build a progressive mapping plan.

Third Mapping Today

Today, I will have my third mapping. I am excited about this. At the very least, we will adjust my processor to comfortable levels. As I mentioned before, I was so excited to be able to hear something on my second mapping, that I allowed the levels to be set a little too high.

I will try to update later today with some results.