§ ¶Pit stop
After I checked my perfectly fine hearing aid battery for the umpteenth time, I realized the reason for the quietness might be my CI. I now only see Sharon annually, unless something comes up in between. My last appointment was April 15. I went in this morning and left three hours later. Whew!Sharon and the graduate audiology student working with her, Reem, had me listen to the different frequency bands (four electrodes each) and balance out the maximum loudness levels. In the end, three of them remained about the same, while one increased significantly in the middle frequencies. This is my new program.
At first, the sound felt like it was coming in my ear too much. It wasn't painful - yet - but as we did some rehab practice, I was distracted enough from it that it was tolerable. We'll see how I do with it. The work was exhausting. I had to go back and forth between two different frequencies and get them to the same volume. It was difficult to distinguish between the frequencies and volume. Sometimes the noise -- which was basically reverberating in my head -- started making me dizzy. That meant immediately lowering the volume.
In the sound booth, I had to raise my hand when I heard a tone, and then I was given the HINT sentences test from a recording (in which I try to repeat as much of the sentence back as possible). Sharon hadn't attempted to do this before as it's very difficult. After that, she repeated the sentences in her own voice, reading them at a slow rate with some repetition. My audiogram showed an improvement from the last one in April, with more hearing in the middle frequencies.
With the HINT recorded sentences, I got 21% correct, which is pretty good for someone like me who wasn't raised auditory-verbal and is straining to understand words that are completely out of context in a recorded, unfamiliar voice. With Sharon's HINT sentences, I scored 57%, or 61/107. In April, I scored 29/106, which is 27%. That's a significant improvement!
Having this visually presented actually caused me to tear up a bit. Maybe it's because I'm PMSing, but it was reaffirming to see that I'm actually making progress. You're probably wondering why you haven't heard from me since June. It's because I haven't had anything to report. Maybe I plateaued. I continue to hear random phrases or sentences without looking, and actually heard several this past weekend. I still need to incorporate aural rehab into my schedule. I really haven't made any major advances. I know the CI journey is a marathon, not a sprint. Still, it's reassuring to know I'm still in it. And hopefully this new map will be like a cool drink of water.
