I got a Baha hearing implant!

On 7th February, I had surgery to implant a titanium screw into the skull bone behind my right ear. A small abutment (looks like a clothing press stud) was then attached to that screw. Once the implant and bone fuse (a process that takes about 3 months), I will receive my sound processor which clips onto the abutment and my hearing will be much improved.

I'm a member of the Baha users support forum and this following testimony will be included on the website soon...

How do you sum up a lifetime of being deaf in one ear?
My hearing was first tested when I was very young. My parents took me to see a family friend, a top ear specialist here in Australia, as they noticed I wasn’t responding to them if they were on my right side. It also became clear that I had no ability to locate the source of sounds. If someone said my name I would look all around me until I could see them. At first my parents thought it might be glue ear, but tests soon revealed that I had profound sensorineural deafness in my right ear. Apparently my cochlea and hearing nerve decided to be antisocial and didn’t want to talk to each other from day one! Well that was a bit rude of them wasn’t it? Haha. My parents were told that it would be a case of waiting 20 years or so for new hearing technology to be invented. Conventional hearing aids were of no use to me. You can’t amplify sound that isn’t there. That was in about 1988.

Fast forward to 2006 after many years of rusty lipreading skills, positioning people on my left side out of habit, and asking “what?” so many times that I’d be rich if I got a coin for each time I said it! I was tired of asking people to repeat themselves. I was tired of walking into noisy places (like a restaurant) and hearing all this muddled, indistinct speech. I was tired of concentrating during conversations so much. I was tired of being tired. There had to be something better than this.

2006 was the year I discovered there were a few devices that could help me hear better. The first of which was the BAHA implant (trialled using a test headband). I decided not to go ahead with surgery as I wasn’t sure the device really worked for me, though in retrospect I’m not sure that the processor was working properly, but I’ll never know for sure. Instead I went with a crossover hearing aid system (CROS – contralateral routing of signal). The behind-the-ear hearing aid in my right ear has a microphone that picks up sound and sends it wirelessly to the receiver hearing aid in my good ear, creating a perception of sound on the deaf side. I was 20 when I first heard sound in a new way. I could definitely hear and understand more with my hearing aids.

4 years later in 2010 I decided to have a second go at trialling the BAHA, which was like my hearing aids but using bone conduction instead of sound travelling through air. This time I tried out a new BP100 processor which I thought was pretty fancy pants! I trialled it for 1 week, but I had already made my choice to say yes to the surgery in the first half hour! I was ready.

On February 7th, 2011 I had my BAHA surgery under general anaesthetic and stayed overnight in hospital. Soon after, I did a little experiment. I blocked my good ear to see if I could hear anything with my implant (before I get the processor). I can't hear speech or the tv yet, but I could faintly hear the shower running and my mum tapping a spoon against a drinking glass. Pretty awesome if I do say so myself!
Getting hearing aids and now a BAHA implant has helped me to accept my hearing loss and not be shy or self-conscious about it anymore. My friends and family have always supported me and they continue to walk with me in my journey to better hearing. For that I cannot thank them enough.

On May 9th 2011 I will get my BP100 processor. If what I heard during the trial is anything to go by, then for the first time ever I will be entering a world full of so many rich colours, only it will be in sound instead. Thank you for reading my testimony. I will update it after I get my magic box! =)

Compliments

Doing some reading, I was recently reminded of a few compliments I have received in the past about my hearing aids, and they were so lovely I've never forgotten them.

Kids are curious that's for sure. They are not insulting, they just have a natural curiosity and want to know more about things, so I never mind at all when they ask me things, like this next example:

Exhibit A
I once got a compliment from a 5 year old boy I babysat one night. For example:
Boy: what are those things on your ears?
Me: I explained that they were called hearing aids and that they help me hear the world better etc.
Boy: my friend at big school has those. they're cool!

Exhibit B
About 5 years ago I worked as a checkout chick at a supermarket. I had recently gotten hearing aids for the first time. This lovely woman and her 7 year old daughter would always come to my register to buy things. One day the mother said that I was a great role model for her daughter (as she wore hearing aids too and now had someone to look up to). That was such a nice thing to say! =)

Last year I started decorating my hearing aids with various sticker designs (which is evident from one of my earlier posts). My friends and family say they look cool and I find it fun to jazz them up a bit. Why not have some fun? =)

I'm back!

Hi all. It's been several months since I posted, owing to lots of stuff going on! I'm hoping to blog more often as I know some of you have been wondering where I've gone!

The biggest piece of hearing-related news is that I'm having surgery in february to get a BAHA bone conduction implant placed in my skull! This will replace my hearing aids and it looks like this:



Here's some more info:
http://www.umm.edu/otolaryngology/baha.htm

New Facebook Page

I just created a new Facebook page called Brisbane Deaf and Hard of Hearing Social Group as I noticed there is a lack of social groups in the area! It's for chatting online as well as meeting up for social activities in person.
Click on this post title to see the page!

Audiology reports

I know a few of you were after some documentation of my audiology results, so I decided to scan in some stuff!


Results from 30/06/06 - right before I got my hearing aids


Most recent results from 16/11/09 - nothing's changed over the years. Still deaf as a post on the right!

It's been a while!

It's been a while since my last post here. I moved interstate recently so blogging has been on the backburner! I've got a few different things relating to hearing loss that I've noticed over the past few months, so I'll share them here.

1. I went to a Subway sandwich outlet last week in Brisbane and to my delight, they had a touch screen ordering system. This is very user-friendly for people with hearing or speech issues as all you have to do is touch through the options, select your roll or wrap, select the ingredients you want on it and then it spits out a piece of paper with your order clearly written and how much it costs. I wish they had these everywhere because I had trouble understanding people in the noisy food court with all that background noise around! It also makes the process much quicker for everyone. I often have trouble ordering food in noisy environments as I can't hear the words clearly, so this ordering system is a great way around that. Some smart person has come up with a great idea, so hats off to them! =)

2. I discovered an awesome new assistive listening device (ALD) that I would love to buy, but sadly it's still in the early stages. The (not at all questionably named) Vibering Sensor is basically a device that determines sound direction for people (like me) who are hard of hearing or deaf, or who missed out on the standard hearing package at birth as I did. I know I've mentioned this before, but you need 2 ears to work out the direction a sound is coming from and how far away the sound is from you. As I have 1 ear that works, I guess my brain is the hard drive that could use a speaker system upgrade! haha. People invent cool gadgets all the time and I reckon this one is going to be a lifesaver if I can get my hands on one.

Here's what the website says:
"The deaf of the world are not just being deprived of music, a sweet whisper and a simple phone call. They are also lacking the ability to be fairly warned of impending danger from out of sight sources. Designers Kwang-seok Jeong, Min-hee Kim and Hyun-joong Kim really deserve a round of silent applause for this inspired design. “Vibering” is an ingenious way to help the deaf, by fashionably housing a sound detection and identification system to be worn as a pair of rings and a wristwatch. The rings are to be worn on both hands and are the ears that not only listen for sounds emanating from behind, they also determine distance, position and vibrate according to source. The wristwatch aspect, identifies the sound wave and presents this info to the wearer in an easy to read display. The watch is programmed to listen for certain key phrases from humans like “Excuse Me..”, your name being called and any number of car noises including the most important one, a car’s horn. This device concept could not just be a major life enhancer for the deaf, it would most certainly save lives."
http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/06/03/stereo-listening-rings-two-rings-to-rule-them-all/

3. Finally, I saw Claire Hooper (from Good News Week) do some stand up comedy on saturday night. One of the audience members was a sign interpreter for deaf kids, so Claire got on the topic of sign language. She only knew how to sign 3 things. They weren't useful but they were funny! Here's the phrases she signed:
"I'm behind this wall!!"
"So, Steve tells me you're blind"
"And that's how I lost my arms!"

Ups and downs

Everyone has good and bad days, no matter who you are. For those of us who are hard of hearing or deaf, sometimes communication can be difficult, but hopefully we don't let it get the best of us. I'm a 'glass half full' kind of person and always try to see the optimistic side, but sometimes I just need to vent.

I guess I want to find out some way to improve things beyond lipreading and using hearing aids.
I'm tired of asking people to repeat what they say to me.
I'm tired of sometimes missing out hearing the punchline to a joke and watching everyone laugh. By the time I ask what the punchline was, the moment has passed.
I'm tired of ignorant people assuming that I'm stupid or less intelligent because I wear hearing aids, or that something is wrong with me when I misunderstand what someone says and try to guess.
I'm tired of ignorant people assuming hearing aids are just for the elderly, or that when others notice my aids, they mention that the only people they know who wear them are their grandparents etc. I would really like to meet some other young people like me who wear hearing aids, but I don't know where to start.
Sometimes I'm just tired of missing out on life.

All this makes me think of my childhood. I'm taken back to a time where playing games was the norm as I was a kid. Take "Marco Polo" for example - that game where you try and find another person in a pool with your eyes closed. If you're in you say "Marco" and the person you're looking for says "Polo". I hated that game, basically because winning it relied solely on something that I do not have - directional hearing. I used to have to "cheat" and dunk under the water, looking for the other person with my eyes open. It was either that or I got teased and ridiculed for not finding the other person, and my role as the person in was retired.

Most people have directional hearing. I do not. Being able to know what direction a sound is coming from relies on 2 functioning ears. The sound arrives to one ear a split second earlier than the other ear, so you can gauge not only the location of a sound, but how far away it is. As I was born with one deaf ear, it's literally an impossible task. If someone calls me and I can't see them, I will literally spin around in a circle looking for them until I find out where they are. Unless someone creates some great miracle hearing aid or implant etc. that can fully restore directional hearing, I will never experience this, but I accepted that a long time ago. I just rely on my vision to cross roads and watch out for cars etc. There are some things that I will never be able to do, but that is life. It's best to learn to accept that and establish manageable and realistic goals in life.

All this being said, the best way to improve communication is to get the attention of a deaf/hard of hearing person before you begin speaking. I clearly remember last year being at a shopping centre with some friends in the city I have just moved to. One of my friends had obviously been trying to call my name because she then walked into my line of vision and tapped my arm to get my attention. I realised she must have been standing behind me and I generally don't hear people unless I see them, especially if they are behind me.

So rule of thumb, if I can't see you I probably can't hear you either!