An Audiologist Visit
October 13, 2014
Ron and I were up early this morning and he and our host went to pick us some breakfast for all of us. My friends managed to have their new place built close to a Shipley Donut Shop - just for me I am sure. What friends!
After enjoying breakfast together, Ron and I left to go to The Houston Ear Research Foundation in Southwest Houston at Hermann Memorial - Southwest. We were early and that turned out to be good since it was not raining (started a few minutes later) and because the elevators were not working - well, 3 out of 4 weren't working. We decided to climb the stairs - to the 6th floor! We are nuts! I found out I need to return to the gym!
By the time we got to the office, the rain had started and continued for the two hours we were there for the appointment. The view from the audiologist's office was lovely, seeing the rain and some lightening over the city.
This visit was to do a mapping. The mapping is done by hooking up my Cochlear sound processor to the computer and tones are played and I raise my hand to signify when I hear those tones. These are covering the range from low to high tones. Then we did another set of testing and at the moment I don't recall the name of it, but the computer plays two different tones, one higher than the other in pitch, and I am to tell her if the second one is softer, louder, or the same as the first. It is a hard test in that you have to ignore that it is two different notes, one higher than the other. This test cross balances the tones so I don't hear high voices as much louder than low ones or the other way around. Next all three sound processors that I have, had to be reprogrammed to the new results.
Mapping
Following that, the audiologist had me go spend some time talking to Ron to see if his voice and mine sounded natural to me. Next it was time to go into the sound proof booth for more tests. First there was another "raise your hand when you hear a tone" test. That was followed by listening to a long list of single, one syllable words and I would repeat each one as I heard it. To the hearing impaired, this is a very difficult test because you have no sentence context to help. There are no clues. You just hear one word. To people who hear well, this test might be very easy, but not to those of us who struggle to figure out what we heard.Sherri, the audiologist, told me that I scored 78%. They consider that wonderful. The rest of you need to understand how hard it is for those of us who only get 78% of the words correct. She explained that they believe that adding 30% to that is what the score would be if I heard those words in sentences and had the context of the conversation to figure out what those words are. So she said I would be at 108%. I told her, "not in the real world". It is true that most of those words: gap, tongue, come, rat, etc. could be figured out in daily conversation, but by the time my mind does that, the speaker is half way through the next sentence.
As always, Sherri was very pleased with my results and is at a total loss as to why I have so much trouble hearing on the telephone. We worked for a while with her calling me on the phone from the next room and she decided that volume is one of the problems, so she raised the volume in the processor. That meant she had to again reprogram all three processors. She was on a tight schedule for a teleconference at noon. We had spent two hours working. She said if I was not happy with any of the new programming, she could see me about 2:30.
I was content and did fine the rest of the day. I find that I miss the first few words in a sentence often and have to have the speaker repeat the beginning. I may hear: "...do lunch right now". Did he say, "I don't want to do lunch right now", or "What if we do lunch right now". So I still play fill in the blank a lot of the time. Please understand that I am not really complaining about this, but rather I am trying to educate those of you with wonderful hearing as to the challenges that some of us face.
The surgeon had told me on our first visit, "You will never hear normally again." He was right. But this sure beats the 5 months when I was deaf. I will take this over the deafness any day. Just please be patient if I have to ask you to repeat things for me. Also, because the listening for me takes constant mental attention to what is being said, it is exhausting. I am just plain tired after being in a situation of having to listen carefully all the time. Those with great hearing never even think about what they are hearing, they just "hear" it.
As I have said before, in God's perfect timing, my deafness came at a time when medical technology could help. It came at a time when I had Medicare to help. For these things I am very thankful. One of my grandmothers was very hard of hearing and I saw how some family members went out of their way to speak loudly so she could hear. I saw others who didn't want to be around her because it was too much effort to talk to her. Thankfully, I remember being one of those who would sit beside her and almost yell to tell her what was going on with me and with my kids. I am so thankful I don't live with guilty feelings about how I treated her near deafness.
When we left the building following our appointment, all of the elevators were working. The rain was coming down hard and blowing strongly. Ron got the car and brought it and the umbrellas to me. About the time we pulled on to the access road it let up for a bit coming and going the rest of the time we were in Houston.
Our next project was to find napkins fort the wedding rehearsal dinner. I had bought the tablecloths here in the valley from a chain store, but they only had a few napkins. Ron spent the next 3 hours driving all over the southern half of Houston picking up napkins at 6 different stores. We finally had enough for the dinner and decided it was time to go home, trying to get out of Houston before rush hour. Lunch was at 4:30 in Richmond, on our way home.
No comments:
Post a Comment