Monday 10 November 2008

I'm now HA free most of the time...

You'll be pleased to hear I've spent the majority of the past week without my Hearing Aid! I can manage in a work situation without it and generally know how loud/quiet I should be speaking. What I don't have is surround sound so I'm looking forward to the time when I can wear the two together and have bilateral sound again. After a discussion with my rehabilitationist I decided I'm going to pursue with just my processor for another couple of weeks and see how it goes day by day. I wear my HA when listening to music as this keeps me sane, I miss music too much to go without it and it just doesn't sound right through the processor yet.

I had a tuning last week which made an incredible difference to how much low sound I can hear. The physicist didn't change much on my map but adjusted the rate that the information is going through to my nerve at.. he increased this twice and after the second adjustment I could hear how deep his voice was. Up until that moment he sounded like any other person but now he sounds like I remember him sounding with a hearing aid. I couldn't cope with all the information that was coming through in the beginning so they had to turn my rate down, but now I've had more experience with listening I can manage the world again! In a rehab appointment after this tuning I was able to hear sentences when I had the context and usually able to grasp a sentence if I had an important word in it. In a more recent rehab appointment I improved even more and was able to hear sentences on at least the first attempt. The rehabilitationist went through all the months in the year to see if I had any difficulties with these but I'm pleased to say I had none. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!

I've actually just noticed typing on my laptop keyboard for this post that I can hear the lower sounds of my fingers hitting the keys. When I was first switched on I didn't like the sound of typing as it was so high and sounded like a woodpecker going "tt,tt,tt,tt,tt," in my head. Now it sounds more like a soft thudding sound. I was relieved after a conversation that I had with the rehabilitationist that the lower sounds WILL come through eventually, my brain is still getting over the shock of hearing high sounds again that these are dominating the lower sounds. I was starting to worry that I would never hear my car engine properly again but I've just got to give it time.. I have so many quiet realisation moments like the keyboard one above that I can't remember them all to write about them on here. I'm getting used to speech and can't wait for the day when everything sounds balanced and no one sound is more dominant than another.

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