One Month In

[Lauren]

It’s been a whirlwind of a week for me. 

Got confirmation last week via X-ray that the implant did slide down a little, hence the Rondo 3 sitting rather low. However at the same time the swelling finally went down enough to try the Sonnet 2. It’s tight but it can work. 

Found out that I did end up with some residual hearing in my left ear at 70db which is just enough for the EAS. Not set up with that yet but next week it’ll all be sorted. 

Rehab: having a hard time still as I live alone and the apps get monotonous so my score when I did the first testing (got boothed on Thursday) wasn’t really good. It was the same as my left ear with no HA or anything pre surgery scored (10%). I’ll try to figure something out. Tried keeping in mind that I hadn’t even been activated for a month yet at that point so expectations were low, but it was still upsetting. I do relatively fine as long as I can lip read but the test was strictly listening to the audiologist’s program. The same weekend I met a friend for coffee and she helped with some simple closed lists and I did much better - I even kept my eyes down, took off my hearing aid, and covered my peripheral vision while I read the list and repeated back what I thought she’d said. Wasn't 100% but did leaps and bounds better than the test the audiologist threw at me. I got feedback on what I had missed too, which was helpful. We will try to get our schedules to mesh again so we can have more meetups. 

Music: still working at this too. For the most part it’s still weird, especially if there’s lyrics, but some instruments come across. I’ve always liked country music and turns out that currently sounds the best right now. With the right song all the twangy bits come across well. Not foot tappin’ territory yet but will hopefully get there someday. 

And found some time to muddle through connecting the AudioStream today and completed my first trial phone call today. My aunt obliged as the familiar voice and InnoCaption helped too. 

Overall I’m hoping this is all promising but there was a rocky start and a few setbacks and most things are still difficult for me. I’ve taken to wearing just the processor around when home. The right HA goes on if I leave or if I have a telemeeting for work but mostly just sits un-used. 

[Mary Beth]

@Lauren

Fortunately for me my audiologist did not test me in the booth on speech until 3 months post activation.  We did booth testing on sounds to help with MAPping until then.

The apps can get very boring.  Shake things up a bit and listen to Ted talks with captions or news in easy English website for slower speech phrase by phrase.

Hang in there.  Everyone’s journey is unique.  Bumps along the way are very common.