A Revision Surgery is in My Future

Today was my appointment with Melinda, the lead engineer at Envoy. I have been beyond nervous and anxious since I made this appointment two weeks ago. While I was so excited to finally know what was going on inside my ear and start to get answers to my many unanswered questions, I have also been a nervous wreck to find out what those answers would be. Or better yet, that there would be no answers. That I made a huge mistake by taking this leap of faith, and that the Esteem would never work for me. 

My poor husband who has had to tolerate my emotional and somewhat snappy attitude the last 2 weeks. I have been a bit on edge and cannot say that I have been the most pleasant person to be around. When I got home from work yesterday, I, naturally, picked a fight with him. I mean, what else is a girl to do when she comes home from work and finds her husband waiting outside on the front porch playfully grinning at you as your car pulls in the driveway. Work has been beyond busy and having this appointment hanging over my head as I struggle hearing my way through life has been emotionally straining to say the least.  Why is it that we push people away when we truly need them the most?

After my husband retreated to his man cave in the basement, to save himself from my less than pleasant attitude (he knows better than to mess with me when I am feeling this wound up), I collapsed in bed, took my first deep breath in almost 2 weeks, and actually screamed. Not like ha-ha I screamed, but horror movie scream. You may think I am crazy but I have to say that it was very liberating. My world collapsed around me and for those 5 very long seconds nothing in the world mattered. I realized that I had hit my breaking point and that the only possible thing that could help me was a, much needed, rejuvenating sleep.

When I woke up this morning, I felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders because I knew that no matter what the outcome of my appointment was today, that there was nothing I could do to change the past or what the future will be. Letting go of things that cannot be controlled is a very difficult thing to do, but it can be so freeing when you do. I was in good spirits when I got to my appointment with Melinda and she was just as wonderful as everyone said that she would be. She had a great positive energy about her, she really knew her stuff, and answered every last question that I had, even with another patient waiting for her appointment to start.

My appointment consisted of doing lots and lots of tests. They did both standard hearing test as well as tests on the device to make sure that each of the Esteem components were working properly. After conducting these tests, she found that while the Esteem components (sensor, sound processor, and driver) were working just fine, it seemed that the driver was not connected properly to my Stapes (one of the three middle ear bones that are used with the Esteem). 

I pulled this picture and definition from the Envoy Esteem website (www.envoymedical.com) so you can understand what I am talking about.

The Driver is attached to the stapes in the middle ear.  The Driver converts the electrical signals that it has received from the Sound Processor back into mechanical vibrations and transmits these signals to the stapes and the cochlea.

The electrical signals that are being adjusted through the sound processor are sent to the driver, which stimulates the stapes and send signals to the cochlea and then off to the brain for interpretation. Essentially the input of sound is being processed correctly but there is a “bug” in output of sound, which is leaving a smaller signal to be interpreted. Melinda said that this is why the distribution of my gain on my audiogram is not consistent; not all of the signals are being processed.

While it feels great to know what exactly is going on with my ear and to finally have my questions answered, this is, unfortunately, not a painless fix. The only way to improve my outcomes with the Esteem is a revision surgery. I will have to be under anesthesia but was told that the surgery is much less invasive than the first and will not take as long since they know exactly where the issue lies.  Also, I will have to be with one ear after surgery but only for two weeks this time. I do not think I could handle another two months of hearing out of one ear as I did with the first surgery!! I was also very relieved to hear that I would not have to pay for this revision surgery, and that Envoy would also cover our travel and hotel expenses.

I decided that I would be having my revision surgery with Dr. Murray and I was told that his assistant would be contacting me Monday to schedule and review all of the details. The timing of this couldn’t be worse, since June through August are my busiest months at work, and my husband will be starting his new job in August and will be attending a very intensive training through the month of August before his job officially starts. Since he is just starting he is not going to be able to take off work right away or be very attentive when I am recovering at home. Also, my sister is expected to have her baby the first week of September so my parents will be in New York City with her before and after the baby comes. So, I am not exactly sure when it will realistically make sense for this to happen. Obviously I want to be able to do this as soon as physically possible, but I also do not want to set myself up for more than I can handle. Also, thinking back to how difficult is was for me to recover from the first surgery, there is no way I would be able to take care of myself. So, my next steps are to talk with work and also trying to find a reliable caretaker and go from there.

And my journey of learning to hear continues (or should I say starts over)...