9 month post CI surgery

Today I went for my 9 month CI appt for the research study. It's hard to believe it's been 9 months! A lot has definitely happened since then and also since I last wrote in September...I'm a terrible blogger! Since September though, I have been adapting to my new drive, new life back in St. Louis and spending time with friends and family. Oh and Brian and I got engaged on Dec 23rd! It's a been an eventful and exciting 2010. I may have struggled with adapting to my CI but I think it's finally stabilizing and I miss it when I don't have it on!

Early December, I had my processor remapped with new settings and new programs. Since then I have noticed that I have been wearing my CI processor more consistently and am more comfortable with sounds. It's probably a combination of getting used to the perception of hearing through it and also the new levels. When I had my CI remapped in December, my audiologist gave me 4 new programs. One with no input processing, one with ADRO, one call Focus (BEAM, ADRO, and ASC), and one with ZOOM. The Zoom feature was new to me. Previously, this feature was only available via the remote. Of course, I never used it because I hardly ever carried the remote with me. Zoom is supposed to find the source of speech in a noisy environment and direct the microphone to hone in on it. Before that, I had been using mostly the program with Beam, ASC, and ADRO, which I liked best because I could tell it reduced static noise significantly and also made soft sounds sharper thanks to ADRO.

So now for the past month and half, I have been using mostly the Zoom program. It seems to work better when I'm in the car and listening to the radio. Since I started working, I've been listening to KMOX on my drive to work because they usually speak more clearly and I know what time certain broadcasts will be going on. I can't get everything, but I like listening for the weather and traffic report :) When I am in a restaurant, I seem to do well with the Zoom program but I also like the Focus program too. They sound different but it is difficult to tell what the difference is. I think the Focus program makes softer sounds louder which helps.

So back to it being 9 months! During the speech perception tests today, we did a lot of listening to words and sentences (in quiet and in noise) with my CI side only, my HA side only, and both CI/HA. With only my CI, I was able to get about 5 words right on the word test and some phonemes. But out of a 100 words, that's still not much. However, words sounded more different from each other than before. I also seemed to do better repeating sentences in noise when I had both CI/HA on compared to my HA only. My audiologist was concerned that I was not detecting the very high frequencies (thresholds were in 40s) so she increased the levels and gain for those today. I could not tell a big difference but we'll see when I'm partaking in meaningful conversations.

I guess I should also mention that I finally got my rechargeable battery system! And my microphone covers! After contacting several people, they finally came. The rechargeable batteries are awesome. They usually last about a day and half and I still carry my disposable battery pack just in case.

And last but definitely not least, I do have a new years resolution for 2011: Spend more time practicing with my CI only! I'll let you know how that goes :)