Auditory Therapy Puts Me Another Step Closer

For my first official therapy session, we did two different exercises. The first exercise was to practice hearing the beginning sound of words. For this exercise, she went through a list of 120 word pairs and I had to tell her if the beginning sound of the two words were the same. Here are a few examples:

Drive-Live

News-Views

Same-Fame

Top-Hop

Skip-Ship

While doing this, she was facing me, but had the piece of paper covering her mouth. I also made sure to look down so that I could practice not being so dependent on looking at people to hear them. If I got the answer incorrect, she pulled the paper down and repeated again allowing me to read her lips to identify the sound.

While this seems like such a simple task, it was not so simple for me. I didn’t do horribly. I was able to identify beginning sounds for 103 out of the 120 word pairs (85.8%). However, I did guess on some of them... If she had asked me to repeat the two words, I probably would have done much much worse. I told her about this and she said that it is okay and that right now she just wants me to listen to the word sounds instead of trying to identifying the word. This will come later!

Since I am having trouble hearing short quick constanant sounds all of the word pairs I listed above were ones I got incorrect. To me, the word “same” and “fame” sound the same because all my brain knows how to hear is the “_ame” of the word.

The next exercise we did was similar. However, instead of identifying if the beginning of the word was the same, I had to identify if the end of the word was the same (i.e., if the words rhymed). Here are a few examples:

Call-Pull

Bend-Wind

Bind-Blond

Boat-Tote

I am happy to say I did much better on this one! I was able to correctly identify if a sound rhymed for 111 of the 120 words (92.5%). The word pairs that I listed above are a few that I was not able to identify on my first try. My therapist reviewed these with me and showed me how the quicker vowel sounds may also be difficult for me to differentiate between such as the “eh” sound in bend and “ih” sound in wind.

Before she left, she gave me an interactive computer program that she often uses for her dyslexic patients since it is all about sound discrimination: what each letter sounds like, the difference between each sound, how to sound out different words. Remember "Hooked on Phonics". Well, it is sort of like that. She gave me the first level of this program to do as practice on my own and said that she would give me the next program once I got through this whole program. She also provided me with some "homework" for me to practice with Fraser. I am actually excited to practice all of this!

This whole experience of seeing a therapist has been really eye opening for me. I think it is helpful for me to understand and see why I am missing the parts of conversation that I do and why I think people say something completely different than they do. I think that this realization and understanding has been and will continue to be a large part in my path to acceptance. When we are in denial about our hearing loss, we do not really understand what is happening to us. Why is it becoming difficult to have a conversation with someone in a restaurant? Why am I not able to hear people when they talk to me from the next room? Why is it less enjoyable for me to be around my friends and family? Why am I getting angry and frustrated with people for not talking loud enough? Why am I so tired all the time? These are just few of the many questions we are pondering in our minds. It is very liberating to have less questions and more answers!

Whether the problem for me is more physical (i.e., my actual hearing) or mental (i.e., my brains ability to identify these sounds), I am not sure at this point in the process. Thinking about this, since I was in such denial about my hearing loss I waited until I absolutely HAD to get hearing aids. Even then, I only wore them to class and work until about 3 years ago. I think that prolonging the inevitable act of getting hearing aids is why these sounds are not familiar to me. If I would have gotten hearing aids when my hearing loss was only mild, I may have been able to still hear the “f” and “t” and “s” sounds with hearing aids, and therefore, my brain would not have lost the ability to identify these sounds or my brain would not have been in the dark about these sounds for 10 whole decade; the gap would have at least been smaller.

I know I cannot drive myself crazy with these "what if's". This is all in the past, and there is nothing that can be done now except to move forward with the knowledge I now have. However, I am saying this and sharing this to motivate others to get hearing aids before it is too late to truly reap all of the benefits they have to offer. Technology today is AMAZING and sadly, most people do not take full advantage of this due to the stigma society puts on wearing hearing aids. If you have the choice... Don't do what I did! Don’t wait! Strive to understand! Get your hearing checked out! Get hearing aids if your audiologist says you need them! Life is too short to waste it in the haze of denial. Acknowledge, accept, and move forward. How do you expect to get anywhere in life when you are just standing still?

My New Years Resolution Is Acceptance

One of the most difficult things I have had to do in the past 10 years is to accept my hearing loss. I feel like I still have yet to fully come to terms with this as I do still become frustrated and sometimes have a difficult time speaking up about it.  I feel like every time I am around my sister, I become closer and closer to accepting my hearing loss.  My sister is a certified yoga instructor, but is currently working for a non-profit in New York called Reach Granada. She is very spiritual and has so much positive energy that just being around her makes you feel inspired, like you can conquered the world and that anything is possible. I wish I could see her everyday because I think its would help my tendency to think the worst of situations. For the last couple of years, she has been driving me to accept my hearing loss and become more open about it. However, in the past I kept closing her out and telling her “you just don’t understand”.

First of all, living with a hearing disability is not that easy. I am not sure which is worse: Being born with and having to live your entire life with a hearing disability OR adjusting to a whole new way of living after developing hearing loss later in life. There are probably thousands of reason why one is worse than the other, but my situation is the latter and that is what I can speak. However, I think it is safe to say that either way, living with hearing loss sucks!

For me, I am grateful for having had normal hearing during my childhood and adolescent. At least I have heard and have had the opportunity to experience sound. However, I do think I have had and am having a more difficult time adjusting to living with a hearing impairment compared to someone who was born with hearing loss. When you are born with a hearing disability, life with a hearing loss is all you know. You start sign language or speech therapy at a young age. You are used wearing hearing aids. You are used to talking about it with family and friends. Looking at this from an outside perspective, I feel like it would be a bit easier to cope with if I was born deaf.

It was not until high school that my hearing loss became noticeable and took a turn for the worst so I was able to hear fairly well for the first 17 or so years of my life. I had a glimpse of the “good life”.  I think what also made it difficult for me was that once I found out I had mild hearing loss in high school, my hearing decreased pretty rapidly over a 9 year period (on average, about 10 decibels per year).  Since this happened so quickly, I did not have a lot of time to process what was happening to me. It was not until a couple of years ago that I realized how much my hearing loss has affected my life and just how difficult it was for me to hear in situations. Once I acknowledged that I was a twenty something year old living with severe hearing loss, I was far from accepting it as the status quo of my life.

As I lost my hearing, I lost a lot of myself with it because I had such a difficult time accepting my hearing loss. Although I do not think I have reached full acceptance of my hearing loss, I am damn proud of how far I have come over the last couple of years and I owe a lot of that to my husband, family, and friends for their never ending support and unconditional love. I honestly do not think I would have made it out of this alive if it wasn’t for them.

I know my sister will never understand what it is like to live with hearing loss, just like I will never know what it is like to live with scar on my face (she was in an car accident about 5 years ago). Neither of us will ever understand each others situations because neither of us have lived a life in the others shoes. However, by driving me to accept my hearing loss, she wasn't trying to understand. She wasn't trying to force me to do something because she "thought it was easy". She was trying to release me from the pain. It wasn't until this Christmas when she said something really powerful to me that it all just clicked.

“You suffer when you choose not to accept your reality.”

Take a deep breath and really let this soak in. 

By not accepting the way things are, we are allowing ourselves to suffer; It is only when we accept, that we can find peace within ourselves. By not accepting my hearing loss, I am causing myself to suffer. By not accepting that my journey to hear again is a slow and vigourous process, I am causing myself to suffer. By getting frustrated that my progress with the Esteem is not smooth sailing as I expected, I am causing myself to suffer. We cannot move forward in life if we are suffering. We cannot overcome lifes struggles, when we are in this much pain. We will not be free from this pain until we accept the reality of our lives. 

Sounds simple, right? I accept my life and I will be happy.

Wrong! Unfortunately, like everything else in life, true acceptance takes time, energy, and hard work. The best things in life do not come easy. It takes not only our trust and faith in God, but also our trust and faith in ourselves. It takes inner strength we must reach from within to find. We must love ourselves for the person that we are today, not the person we were yesterday. Not the disability we cannot control. Not the financial plunders we are in. We must live life as it is. Do not worry about what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. Live life today for what it is worth. Accept today for what it is, whether the situations you encounter are good or bad. GOD will give you the strength to overcome. You just have to have a little faith.

I do not know what the rest of my journey will be like. What struggles I will face. What crossroads I may come to. I will not worry about the embarrassing situations I encountered in the past because I was not able to hear. I will not focus on the situations in the past that made me feel bad about myself. My past situations do not define me and I will no longer let them hold me back in life. I have a new ear and I am ready to make the most use of it in 2012!  

In light of the new year, my New Years resolution is to find acceptance within myself, my life, my hearing, situations I encounter, all things in life.

Happy New Years! 

A Survival Guide for New Deafies! (GREAT BOOK)

My husband got me a Kindle for Christmas and I found the most amazing book! It is called A Survival Guide for New Deafies! and is specifically written for people who suffer from late on-set hearing loss, LIKE ME!

It is a short book (only 39 pages) and took me about 30 minutes to read. It is one of those books that I will read over and over again whenever I am feeling down about myself or am unable to hear something; very inspiring. If you are suffering from hearing loss and are having a difficult time accepting it as your reality, then I definitely suggest you read this. It is also a great book for family and friends of Deafies to read so that they can understand the struggle we face and how to react to your situation.

Here are the "rules" that are outlined in this book:

• Always have a sense of humor about your hearing loss
• Never Apologize for being a Deafie! NEVER!
• Be honst about your new Deafie status to old and new friends, family, and associates 
• Learn all modes of communication
• Stay social!
• Understand your hearing loss
• Allow for only small moments of self pity!!
• Beware of non-believers

Just thought I would share this piece of inspiration to anyone out there struggling with hearing loss! :)

Head Cold and Feedback From My Esteem

Most of the feedback and distortion I have experienced with my Esteem has sounded oceany or like a crackling noise. Up until last week, I had only experienced the high pitched screeching feedback twice. However, I have only heard this on the highest profile setting (C5) and it has never been constant. The first time I heard this type of feedback was about a week before Thanksgiving when I got out of the shower and wrapped my hair in a towel. My ear was folded within my towel when this happened so, once I adjusted the position of my ear the feedback went away. Just to be safe, I changed my programming to C4 that evening. I wonder if having water in my ear caused this feedback?

The night of Thanksgiving is when I heard this high-pitched feedback again. I had spent a long day at work (yes, work!) in effort to save my holiday time for Christmas and we had spent the evening with Frasers’ parents cooking and eating dinner, so I was pretty exhausted that evening. Fraser collapsed in bed and I jumped in bed on top of him, laying my head on chest. This was when I heard the squeaky high-pitched feedback for the second time. I looked at Fraser and asked him if he heard it too. He seemed puzzled as to what I was talking about. As a joke, my husband calls my hearing aids my “squeakers” because every time I try to cuddle with him and lay in his nook, they would produce a loud screeching feedback that he could actually hear.  I guess he cannot hear feedback from my Esteem!

Throughout my life, even as a young child, I have always experienced seasonal allergies but since my surgery, my head congestion has been a bit out of control. I have been coughing up some questionable mucus and just feel like I have a permanent sinus infection. Interestingly, I have not actually felt sick. I was told by Dr. Marzo that I should expect to have some head congestion for the next couple of months and that taking an over the counter decongestant should help reduce the amount of fluids and make this a bit more manageable. During my activation, I was told that head congestion or having a cold may make it more difficult to hear, as it would when a person with normal hearing has a cold. I was also told that having a cold produces fluids in your ear which could also cause feedback. Throughout the last couple of month I have been taking Zyertec D pretty consistently and have found that this does have an effect on how well I am able to hear. I am generally able to hear much better when it is in my system.

Towards the end of November, I saw my doctor for a check-up and told her what I was experiencing. She put me on an antibiotic for 10 days but that didn’t really seem to do the trick. For the last week, I have been experiencing the high-pitched screeching feedback every time I blow my nose. Basically, my ear would pop while blowing my nose and I would experience this feedback until I swallowed and my ear had un-popped. This was even happening when I went down to C3. When my ears popped, it sort of hurt. The pain was not unbearable but it definitely didn’t feel good! I have only had one ear infection in my entire life and I just remember my ear popping and it feeling similar to this.

So, basically I have been experiencing the signs of a cold for the last month but I did not actually start feeling sick until this weekend. When I woke up yesterday, my nose was so stuffed up I could barely breath, my glands were so swollen I couldn’t even talk, and I was coughing up some questionable mucus. I spent most of the day sleeping, which my puppy Rufus did not like.  He kept sneaking into the bedroom with his ball, trying desperately do play fetch with me. At one point, he dropped his ball underneath the bed and started whimpering because he couldn’t get it. I stuck my head underneath the bed so I could grab his ball and my ear started screeching with the high-pitched feedback but this time it did not stop. I had to turn my ear down in order to get this feedback to go away. Something was definitely not right.

First thing this morning, Fraser called the doctor and made an appointment for me. She said I have an ear and sinus infection (boo!) and put me on the Z-pack, steroids, a decongestant, and cough syrup so I hope to get this cold out of my system before my readjustment appointment next week. I am very concerned that this will impact my appointment and I pray to God that everything will work out for the best.