Mapping Appointment

On Friday the 27th of September, I had my first mapping appointment for the audiologist to make any tweaks to the implant and give me some more programmes to play about with. Yes, yes, I know that was nearly 2 weeks ago but, to be honest, I’ve been distracted by all the things I can now hear. If that little teaser doesn’t keep you reading, nothing will…

It was set to be a long old day as, after seeing the audiologist I was meeting the speech and language therapist to check that I’d been doing my homework from the week before… (I had of course!)

The mapping session was great—I’d been hearing a lot already with the implant so the audiologist only made a couple of minor adjustments. Then she decided to test how much I could actually hear. She sat me in front of a speaker and played me a number of simple sentences such as ‘The boy bounces the ball’ or ‘the man forgot to update his blog for nearly 2 weeks’. 😉 I was only to listen through my implant taking my hearing aid in my left ear out and repeat as much of the sentence as I heard. Now, when I did this test back when I was being assessed for the implant, I only scored about 35% in my right ear with no background noise and around 20 % when background noise was added. So, what were my scores this time? I was staggered to be told that I scored 95 % in quiet and 74 % with background noise. I’ll take that as a result after just a week! Victoria had noticed the huge improvement, but we were both amazed by a result this good 🙂

The audiologist then gave me some extra programmes for noisier situations which I could play with until my next appointment. On programme 1 is the basic everyday setting that I’ve been using up to now. On programme 2 I’ve got a combination of ‘Clear Voice’ and the zoom feature which picks up noise from directly in front of me blocking out background noise from behind. Programmes 3 and 4 are these features on their own so I can decide whether I like them in combination or as individual programmes. I’ll come back to this a bit later.

We then came to the bit of the appointment I was most looking forward to. One of the major selling points of the particular implant I’ve been given is that, using the Phonak ComPilot, it is possible to stream sound from Bluetooth devices (such as my phone etc) directly to the implant. I was lucky that St Thomas’s had negotiated with Advanced Bionics to have the ComPilot included in the kit their patients get with the implant thus saving me a few hundred quid and ensuring that I can afford to buy my wife a Christmas present this year! At the time of my switch-on, the ComPilot hadn’t arrived but, fortunately, by the time of my mapping session it had turned up all shiny, exciting and new! This was a bit of a step in to the unknown for the audiologist as well as my good self and I think she was just as interested as I was to see how well it would work. Luckily, it was easy to set up and we paired it with my Iphone straightaway to see if it was working. (I do love technology when it works as it should). For anyone interested, this is the ComPilot device—it is compatible with some Phonak made hearing aids as well I understand.
http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/accessories/compilot-tvlink-s/overview.html

So, after all that excitement, there was just time to grab a sandwich before my meeting with the speech and language therapist. She asked about the homework from the week before and, after we’d gone through all the things I could hear she said that she was really pleased with my progress. One of the exercises she’d planned for that session was to read aloud from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets with me reading along in Braille. She decided however to go straight on to just reading aloud with me repeating what I’d heard—which I was able to do. She then set me homework of trying to use the telephone before our next appointment in November.

In my next post (which will be sooner in coming than this one was, I promise!), I’ll talk about the last couple of weeks and what I’ve been able to hear.

A week after switch on

Well, it’s been nearly a week since my cochlear implant was switched on last Thursday and, in terms of what I can hear, it has been quite a week!

 

Last time I mentioned that the adjustments the audiologist made to the implant on the second day of switch-on made a huge difference to what I could hear. Since then I’ve been able to have conversations with Victoria without my hearing aid in the other ear and can often hear her even when she is some distance away. The hearing therapist had given us homework, similar to the exercises I outlined in my last post and I am now able to hear the words easily in nearly all cases. While I could hear Victoria’s dulcet tones (she told me to say that) very easily, the test would be whether I could hear other people speaking. So,  we were interested to see how I would get on when my PA came to work on Monday as I’ve often struggled to hear her more high-pitched voice. Well, after a couple of minutes of being freaked out by how deep and manly she was sounding through the implant (!), I could hear her just fine. I was able to chat to her in the car, which I haven’t been able to do previously, and I could even here some of what the guy in the shop was saying to me, which is a definite improvement.

 

I bought a pair of cheap headphones so that sound from my radio/computer etc could be brought directly to the implant. The way the implant is designed makes it easy to put a pair of headphones over the top, and straight away I was able to hear a football match on the radio. I couldn’t get every word, but I could follow the gist of what was going on. I listened to another couple of games the next day and it got even better. I’ve also been experimenting with audio books and talk radio to see how much I can hear, and, the answer at the moment is pretty much everything. Music still sounds pretty horrible but I haven’t spent much time getting used to that at the moment. All in all, I’m really pleased to be doing some things that I really enjoy, but haven’t been able to manage for quite a while  🙂

 

The headphones are only a temporary measure. When the stuff from Advanced Bionics finally arrives at the hospital, I’ll be able to use something called the ComPilot. This clever little thing is warn around my neck and can be paired with my Bluetooth devices, i.e. my Iphone and laptop. This will send the sound directly to the implant which should improve things even more.  If you’re interested, you can find out more here: http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/accessories/compilot-tvlink-s/overview.html

 

I’m very lucky that the audiologist at my hospital negotiated hard with Advanced Bionics and persuaded them to provide the compilot as standard to their patients. Great news for me, as it’s not cheap!

 

I’m hoping it will be available when I go for my first mapping session on Friday. I’ll update the blog on Saturday with how that went 🙂

The big switch on!

Firstly, an apology for being very slow in updating the blog—it has been quite a few days!

My switch-on was scheduled for 1.30 on the 19th September so my wife and I travelled down from Buckinghamshire at lunchtime to give us plenty of time. After braving the tube and a little walk in the rain we arrived at the hospital and went through to my appointment. Unfortunately, the actual sound processor I was going to have hadn’t arrived from the manufacturer (Advanced Bionics) yet, but they had another one (same make and model) that I could use in the meantime. The only difference was that it was not the colour I had asked for… not that that really matters to me! 😉

The first step was to fit the processor which was connected to the computer. The electrodes were tested and I heard a variety of beep sounds at different pitches from quite low to quite high. There are 20 electrodes in all and the audiologist was testing a few at a time so this was fairly quick. She then switched it on…

I have to admit here that my first impressions were… well… underwhelming. While I’d tried to keep my expectations low, it was hard not to hope for miracles! Everything sounded muffled and pretty awful quite frankly. The audiologist cranked up the volume a little which helped but it still wasn’t great. Thinking back, it was probably better than I thought it was at the time. I could hear voices but it was like they were mumbling. My wife says that she could tell that I was hearing more simply because she wasn’t having to repeat everything that my audiologist said anymore. We went for a little walk around the hospital to hear different noises and I could hear various sounds such as footsteps, the lift etc. The audiologist had given me 3 different programmes to play with (there is a maximum of 5 available). The 3 I had were simply louder volumes. She said that in the 24 hours between my switch-on and my second appointment, I’d probably go through those programmes, as my brain got used to the sounds and wanted more. She disabled the volume for the first day (presumably to stop inexperienced users turning it up and blowing their heads off)!

So then it was the journey home. We just avoided rush hour and had an incident free journey home. On the tube, I could hear little snippets of the announcements. For example, I couldn’t hear the name of the station we were at, but I could hear things like ‘this is the Bakerloo line, change here for the Jubilee line’.
During the course of the evening, I tried various things like listening to music, audiobook, radio and computer. Music was fine. I could recognise songs that were familiar to me. The audiobook, I could hear some words but not all. The radio was just noise. I couldn’t make out words. My computer sounded slightly different but I could hear what my screen reader was saying. All of these things were out loud as I didn’t have suitable headphones.

The second day of switch was more exciting for me, as I turned a corner during my second session. The audiologist changed the volume settings and added several programmes of volume for me. This made a huge difference to me and I found that I could hear the audiologist with just my implant, and hold a conversation with her. Again, we went for a wander to get a drink and I started to be able to identify sounds like lift announcements. I also became more aware of environmental sounds- asking my wife what the noise was, saying it sounded like a trolley. In fact it was one of those large commercial wheelie bins, so not far off!
I then had my first rehab appointment. The speech therapist was very keen for me to take things slowly, but laughed when she found out about all my experimenting! She tried a few simple things with me like making sounds and asking me to say whether there were one, two or three of them. She then said some words and I had to say whether they were long or short. She seemed quite impressed when I started to tell her what some of the words were, and said I was showing off! She then showed my wife a category exercise, where I was told a category like flowers, and then had to repeat each word as it was said (rose, daffodil etc). She also suggested that I listen to Victoria read a book while I follow it in Braille.
I went off home, feeling really pleased with my progress, and enjoyed repeating to Victoria all the train announcements, as I heard them! It was a long day but I felt that I had a great result.