This: today we welcomed spring Minnesota style, with four inches of new snow. The weather people are all but promising it will be melted by Sunday. I shoveled the driveway just in case they're wrong.
That: I'm sick. Jeff's sick. I have a cold. I thought Jeff did, too, but he told me he was dying. 'Course, I've heard that line before, the last time he had a cold. And he didn't die.
The Other: I went to my "six month" audiological eval on Thursday to check my progress with my cochlear implant. It's actually been more than six months since my implant was activated, but I cancelled a few appointments in the interim that got me off schedule. The news was all good, and I'm solidly above average in all the performance areas. Last time I was tested, I did some of my testing with my hearing aid on, and that seemed to boost my discrimination. This time Dianna, my audiologist, wanted to test me with only my processor on, because my scores were already good before with the boost from the hearing aid. We did four tests with just my cochlear implant:
Sentence test 1: the male voice uses speech that isn't too fast and prefaces each sentence with "ready." The sentences are different lengths: "Good morning." "She looked out the window and saw a dog running in the yard." I correctly repeated 95% of the words... an A+!
Sentence test 2: the male voice uses faster-paced speech, sentences that are all the same length, and doesn't signal me with "ready." I scored 84% on this test.
Single word discrimination: single-syllable words in isolation, which are harder without the context of a sentence. The last time I did this with only my processor, I had about about 45% right. This time I had 64% right.
Sentence test in noise: a male voicing sentences in the presence of background noise. This definitely is supposed to be harder than anything I've done so far. I correctly repeated 70% of the words, and my audiologist was duly impressed.
Afterwards we talked about my wanting to get a second implant, which I'd like to schedule for the spring of 2009. It may be a more lengthy process to get insurance approval for a second implant, so I'll want to start sooner rather than later if I want to schedule the surgery on my timetable. A second implant is supposed to be most advantageous for hearing in noise and also for localizing sounds. While I would appreciate those advantages, the real reason I want to get a second implant is because my hearing is so unbalanced. The difference between hearing with the implant and hearing with the hearing aid is incredible. I can only shake my head in wonder that I ever managed with only the hearing aids.
The real world impact of my improved hearing with the implant still continues to unfold. I don't think I've really taken advantage of what I can hear now, other than to surprise my kids when they think I'm not hearing what they say under their breath or when they argue out of my sightline. I think my lack of using my hearing is now partly a listening problem rather than a hearing problem - I'm just not used to paying attention to what is being said because I'm so used to not hearing without being able to see the speaker. On the way home from my audiology appointment, I turned on the radio and switched through the stations until I came to a talk show. I figured if I could hear such a great percentage of the sentences in the audiology booth, I should be able to hear something on the radio. And to my surprise, I did hear something. A woman was being interviewed and she was discussing her experiences, I believe as a political figure. She had traveled all over the world and met all kinds of famous people, and was talking about the war in Iraq and how the US could fix the mess it made there, and she also talked about growing up in Michigan. I didn't hear everything, but it was more than I'd ever heard on the radio that I could remember, and I was... amazed. It still takes a great deal of concentration for me to hear and understand something like that, but it's doable in a way that it was never doable before.
There are still barriers, of course. Besides background noise, which is ever-present in the real world, I still struggle with certain voices and speech patterns. The woman who was talking on the radio was very clear and easy to understand, but I couldn't understand anything said by the man who was interviewing her. It makes me think of a time I was sitting with one of my students at school and there was an announcement over the PA system. My student also has a cochlear implant, and asked me what was said in the announcment. I said, "You tell me! You've had your implant longer than I have." And he said, "But it sounds sloppy." And, for me, that describes the problem perfectly: too many people have sloppy speech. It's time for me to stop being defensive about not being able to hear. Instead, I'll go on the offensive, telling people that I'll understand them just fine if they just speak clearly!
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2 comments:
That's awesome that things are turning out so well. I have to admit, not knowing much about this surgery, the risks made me a little apprehensive. What if your hearing had gotten worse? Don't want to think about that.
Now that you are passing your hearing tests so well, I propose we set up something to test your listening. In this test, Jeff will be the respondent to the questions. How well are you listening to him? Perhaps we could also create a hypothesis as to whether listening is a genetic trait passed on from generation to generation. If you do poorly on the listening tests we could establish that the non-listening gene was passed to you from your father.
I think everyone who has a cochlear implant worries about making things worse. My former vocational rehab counselor had CI surgery a few years ago, and I talked with him before I made the decision to get the implant myself. He said his last thought before they administered the presurgical drug cocktail was, "I hope I'm not making the worst mistake of my life." But usually, there isn't much left to lose, hearing-wise. I was getting to that point the last year or so, with 10-15 decibel drops in my hearing across all the frequencies.
Your listening test proposal has its merits. However, it will be hard to establish any sound data when working with subjects whose approach to confronting communication breakdowns is to deny that anyone ever said anything.
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