3 months and counting!

Hard to believe but I'm a week past three months since SO day! And it's all good.

I had a full assessment last week and tomorrow I get a (more or less) final adjustment to settings and my hearing aid(s) fixed for best use too. I'm still not fabulous on the phone and actually prefer using the HA (if I have to talk on the phone) so perhaps that just needs practice... and time. It's also kinda tiring holding the phone up to the CI so not really conducive to having a blether with anyone. I would like to try a CI programme that helps for listening to music but that always had to wait until 'normal' hearing was optimal. And I still need to find a double headed jack plug for the computer so I can use both my streamer to my hearing aid and another mic to the CI as listening and talking on there (Skype especially) with just one ear, is not great. I'm not crazy about all the wires but I can also use my 'reserve' CI that is behind the ear and that works wirelessly... it's just a bit of a rigmarol... not very spontaneous.

My assessment could not have gone better though. Wish I'd done as well in exams when I was a kid!
What they do is sit you in front of a speaker and fire words at you, CI only, then CI + HA. I have to repeat the words of course as well as possible, saying just part of what I hear rather than nothing if I'm not sure. Then I have to repeat sentences. Followed by a timed repeat of a whole story, sentence for sentence. So pleased with myself, I did really, really well. And it was all without reading lips, just hearing as the speaker wasn't visible. Of course it's all done in a soundproofed room and everything is well articulated but there has to be a bottom line to measure things. 'Real life' situations are of course skewed somewhat with noise around you and varying levels of articulation and pronunciation and that is always going to affect things.

Story test
I got to 81 words per minute being repeated (properly too!) At the one month assessment this was 44 words per minute and I thought I did great there!

Sentence test - (syllables correct) 
98% (!!!) At the one month assessment this was practically not to be improved at already 90% :)

Word test 
CI+HA
sounds -  92% (84% last time)
words - 82% (61%)

CI only
sounds - 83% (74%)
words - 64% (45%)

HA only
sounds - 73% (62%)
words - 42% (36%)

Pre-operative the scores were so low I don't know how I coped... I really cannot imagine any more! Only the word test was taken then and they were (with BOTH hearing aids):
sounds - 62% (NO HAs 47%)
words - 33%  (NO HAs 12%)

So, a full improvement in all situations since two months ago and you can see that the HA is (next to) useless on it's own yet really does give the CI that extra little boost. And a three zillion percent improvement (ok, I know you can't get more than 100%) since only October 2013. Such a difference. I hope I'm reading all the results from the letter I just received, properly as I'm not sure how pre-op and post op HA results differ (although I suppose it can just vary and it is only very slightly despite being two versus one HA).

Anyway, it's all about what I can hear NOW not what I could hear THEN. And jeezo that's plenty.
Fecking birds would drive you potty! hahaha... oh I do still love them, honestly but they do go on when you're sitting in the garden of an evening. Music? well that really does need improving but at loud concerts I have always taken my HAs off anyway. Was just (am still) hoping that it will improve... it has already somewhat, just not what i was hoping on... yet. Oh and I can hear myself whistle now! I was always one of those annoying types that whistles all day long... tunelessly or otherwise, I'm no virtuoso whistler by any means. But I've missed it over the last years as can't hear myself do it... it's just air I know is passing. I remember a boss telling me that 'in the old days' it was forbidden to whistle in the office and I told him he'd have had to sack me then as I couldn't stop (yeah, that annoying whistler was always going to be me). I've never smoked but have the lines around the mouth with the same kind of pouting... whistling! hehehe. So I'm back up and running with the old 'whistle a happy tune' nonsense. Sadly out of practice... who can I annoy next?

After my last visit to UMC I paid a visit to Utrecht's Botanical Gardens (375 years old btw) which are very nearby the hospital (as I finally found out). Spent a lovely couple of hours wandering all around it, enjoying a different kind of quiet. Frogs are loud I know that now! And it was nice hearing the bees at work. And instead of seeing the gardener snipping the lawn edge, I could actually hear him doing it... and talking to his mate the while!

Frogs are LOUD!

I could hear the bees in the hive.

I'm not sure I will have much more to tell about my CI here in the blogosphere and it's not like I'm that regular. I may or may not continue in blethery vein, as mentioned at the top of the blog page. I only know that I will be hearing about things I might write about much more easily than I have done for years.