Over and out

Three years and almost a hundred posts later, it’s time to end the blog.  I started blogging in February 2016 and continued until July 2017, then had a bit of a break.  I started again in November 2017 when I’d just had my implant operation and now here we are……..

These days I’m definitely running out of ideas for things to write about so I’ve decided it’s time to stop.  I’ve loved this blog.  I’ve loved it so much I don’t want it to just fizzle out, with a post every several months, as some blogs do.  I want to call a definite halt.

So there you go.  End!  Thank you everyone – for reading, for following, and for your support and feedback.  THANK YOU.

But one last thing.  Some of you might want to hear how I’m getting on sixteen months after cochlear implant switch-on day.  Some of you might want not to miss the last episode of the film.  If that applies to you…..read on one last time.  If that doesn’t appeal…..all best wishes from me and farewell.

OK faithful people-interested-in-cochlear-implants – here goes!

Saga article on cochlear implants

Saga magazine (a UK magazine for the over-50s) included a piece in their latest edition about me and my cochlear implant.  I’ve just realised that the article is available online so here’s a link.  I was pleased to get an email from the Cochlear Implant centre a few days after publication, reporting that they had been contacted by a man worried about his wife’s worsening hearing problems and wondering if a CI might be a solution.  They were able to point him in the right direction for an assessment.

Thank you Saga, then, and special thanks to Med-El (the manufacturer of my implant) whose publicity department arranged the article.

Why I didn’t learn sign language

When I was first diagnosed with hearing loss forty years ago, and warned that the situation was likely to get progressively worse, I assumed that one day I might need to use sign language.  Within months of the diagnosis I booked myself on a week-long Intensive Beginners course at the City Lit, in London (I lived in London then).

It was an excellent course.  I’ve long forgotten the signs I learnt but some things I still remember, for example the very different grammatical structure of a sentence in sign compared to a sentence in spoken or written English.

When the week was over, though, I didn’t book any follow-ups.

NICE rule change on cochlear implants

The clown with the funny face has gone.  Or almost so.

I’ve been putting off writing this post because the initial announcement from NICE* on changed eligibility criteria for cochlear implants in England and Wales was flagged as confidential, with a publication date of 27 February.  But the National Cochlear Implant Users Association has gone public so if they can, I can.  It’s excellent news.  The new criteria are more generous and many more people should qualify for an implant as a result.

What’s with the clowns?  They were part of the dreaded Bamford-Kowal-Bench (BKB) test and it will go.  No longer will people sit in soundproof rooms and listen to a tape of someone with very clear diction, speaking very loudly, working through a list of sentences and pausing for a lengthy period between each one.

Things people don’t understand about hearing loss: number three…..the pain of it

Another thing people don’t understand about severe hearing loss; I don’t think they understand the pain of it.

I’ve written before about how helpful I found some counselling sessions in 2017, when things were at their worst.  The most helpful thing the counsellor did, in hindsight, was to give a name to my emotions.  “I’m hearing a lot of grief” she said.  Naming it was powerful.  Yes, it was grief.  It was a very profound grief, akin to losing someone very close to me, because indeed I had.  I had lost a part of myself.  Not just my hearing but my confidence, my personality…….quite a lot of “me”, in fact.

Things people don’t understand about hearing loss: number two….hearing aids don’t give you your hearing back

But people think they do, don’t they?  They think you put them in your ears and, lo and behold, you can hear again.  But it’s not like that.  It’s become a bit of a cliché amongst people with hearing loss that hearing aids are not like spectacles, but it’s true.  I’m short-sighted but when I put my glasses on I can see almost perfectly.  Hearing aids???  No, no…..not like that at all.

Well, let me have a caveat here.  They don’t work like glasses unless your hearing loss is really fairly mild.  I meet people and I read about people who do, in fact, put their hearing aids in and experience a huge and immediate benefit.  I’m sure when I got my first one, about twenty five years ago, it made a big difference.  When there is just a relatively small amount of hearing loss to be tweaked amplifying the “hearing loss bits” works.  It’s when the “hearing loss bits” get more substantial that the problems really kick in.

Cochlear implant film: episode five

Episode five is up on the MED-EL website this morning.  A very, very, very happy “three months in”.  You can watch it here (or possibly hear).  Don’t forget – subtitles can be found by clicking on CC at the bottom of the screen.

Merry Christmas everyone.

 

Image copyright: damedeeso / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Plinkety plink; how do you tell if your ears are working?

I’ve had a perforated eardrum.  It was the non-implanted side, after a chest infection/cough….sudden sharp pain…..fluid coming out of my ear…..ring 111…..trip to see emergency doctor on a Saturday morning.  It all seems fine now but yes I did panic.  I particularly panicked when I couldn’t hear my hearing aid’s reassuring plinkety-plink-plink sound when I turned it on.  My GP said it might take a few weeks for the eardrum to heal enough to give me my “normal” hearing back in that ear but, just two weeks after it all began, things sound pretty good.  So that’s not the main point of this post.  The point is……what do you say to yourself to check that your ears are working???

Cochlear implant film: episode four

Episode Four is now available.

I’ve had the operation, I’ve had “switch on”.  Here I am talking about the first few days of being back home with a new “thing” on the side of my head.  Getting used to it, arguing with it……and suddenly hearing a wide variety of environmental sounds I hadn’t heard for so long.

One of the original blog posts covering this period was In which I stir a mug of tea and that event (stirring the tea!) is something I still vividly remember. It can still make me tear up. 

Cochlear implant film: episodes two and three

Episodes Two and Three of the film are now available.

Episode Two is about the operation, which is almost exactly a year ago (a year last Thursday, to be precise).  Episode Three is switch-on, which took place on 7 December 2017.  It’s hard to believe that a year has gone by since those events.