Thursday 9 October 2008

The day before my 3rd mapping

I'm off to the hospital tomorrow for my third mapping. I wanted to update this before I go so that I have a before and after memoir! I have had some real ups and downs in the past week and a bit. The first few days after switch on were a nightmare. All I could hear was what sounded like birds in my ear all day. "Shh", "ch" and "ss" were the only clear sounds. By Wednesday I was very emotional, hating the implant and all I wanted to do was rip it off and hurl it at the nearest wall! I cried a lot that day and lots of my colleagues witnessed this, but I couldn't pretend I was happy when I clearly wasn't. Because of this state that I got in I really wanted to go back to the Emmeline Centre and change the settings. From talking to others and what I felt personally, I decided that I'd set my comfortably loud sounds too loud and wanted to get them turned down. I also wanted emotional reassurance from professionals that things were going to get better! So I went back to the hospital on Friday and I spent a good hour or so with the Physicist adjusting all the levels and he tried to give me more lower sounds as I could not hear these as yet. I went away from that appointment feeling much happier and the sounds I was hearing didn't give me such a headache. I still reluctantly wore it but over the weekend something happened to my attitude. At a concert on Sunday I fully expected to remove the processor and enjoy the music with just one hearing aid. However, I took it off and felt unbalanced without it! OMG... So I put it back on and wore it for the whole evening, beeps and all! I have continued to wear it with my hearing aid all week and just wearing the processor in the mornings and evenings at home or any other opportunity when it's quiet and I can focus on noises around me. I can hear my very loud kitchen clock ticking from two metres away and couldn't do this with just my hearing aids. I can hear my car indicator ticking and couldn't do this before.

My colleague tested what I could hear using six sounds that are used to test childrens hearing with their implants; ooh, arr, eee, mmm, sss and shh. If there were two sounds to choose from I could discriminate which sound she'd said. If I was choosing one from all six I didn't do as well. I tended to confuse ooh with mmm and sss with eee as these latter sounds are quite high. I was very pleased with these results though and felt good that just over a week after being switched on I'm able to discriminate between these sounds and it can only improve. I might have been able to distinguish these sounds with my two hearing aids but I certainly would have struggled with the higher sounds and these are the sounds I'm now having success hearing again.

Some things are no longer sounding beepy - I scratched a rough velcro strip on Wed after switch on to see what it sounded like and instead of sounding scratchy it sounded like "beep,beep,beep" in very quick succession. Now, things are starting to make sense, paper and plastic are still weird but getting there. Speech is very boring to listen to as the higher frequencies are clearish but the rest is low and monotonous, like a very boring maths teacher droning on at the same frequency. So, if I sing along to music with just my implant I start singing with a low, boring voice and I switch my hearing aid on and realise the music is soaring and my voice should be too! I must be getting used to these higher sounds though as the lower ones are starting to come through. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and seeing how much it changes afterwards!

5 comments:

Katie-Louise's blog said...

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for commenting on my blogs. Finally I someone has a blog that is nearer enough the same ages as me. How did you find out about mine?

Now your Bionic, I bet it feels strange to wear the coil on your head. I did to me at first. I see you have rockets patten on your implant. I have too. Actually I have all the colours as I'm crazy and love to change them :D My favourite one is the rainbow one and the sea waves

I had surgery april and switched on may. Woop! 6 months already. It did started off horrible with only just beeping sounds to every sound but after a few mappings and the more you wear it the better it gets. Well, everyone has said that to me to encourage me to wear it and it worked and did get better. So, here me telling you :-)

I never bothered with using my H-aids after a while as the implant sounded better.

So, it's your 3rd mapping. Is that 1 week? or?

katie x

Sarah C said...

I went to the ear foundation yesterday for a course and the leader of it recommended you, I'm really sorry I can't remember her name but it was in Nottingham. That ring any bells?

It did feel weird to wear the coil at first and I've gotten upset that I can't hide it underneath my hair a few times when it's down (my hair is so fine)

I just have the colours that children have at the moment, hope to expand my collection and get some more if the hospital let me! My favourite one is the rainbow one too - I'm obsessed with rainbows!

It's two weeks on Monday since I've been switched on so a week and a half so far... Will put up another blog soon and you can read how I'm getting on after my 3rd mapping! Thanks for replying :o) x

Katie-Louise's blog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Katie-Louise's blog said...

Your welcome.

I soometimes can't really put it under my hair. Every time I have my hair up and put it underneath it just make this lump which i don't like. It not to bad when my hair down.

So, every time I wear it I wear it on top of my hair. Even though, I did hate it when people stared at you. At my first week of uni my whole class kept looking at me and I did felt so uncomfortable. In the end I got used to it and actually told them all what it is!

Is the lady who you met called Julie or Dyan? Julie is a teacher of a deaf too and works at a school and also at ear foundation doing sounding boreds website. They other lady I know there is Dyan she is a speech therispt. So, it might be one of them!

Do you often go to ear foundation or it's just the one off?

I'll be looking forward to read more of your blogs :-D Trust me it WILL get better.

anyway, you can add me on msn if you have one ... Bionic-katie@live.co.uk

katie x

Sarah C said...

Hi Katie,

Sorry I've taken so long to reply! I think the lady I met was called Julie, she spoke about the sounding board website and that she is setting it up and controls it so it must be her! She also mentioned that she was a teacher of the deaf... My visit to the EF last week was my first one, just for a one day course. I've written a new blog so you can see how I'm getting on. Where does your hearing sit on an audiogram now? I'm between 45 and 60db now. So glad I've got someone to talk to who has been through it all already, thanks for your support! Sarah x PS I'll add you to MSN.