The Result!

well i finally got hearing test and she said if i can do it with hearing aid on and if it get too uncomfortable we can stop so i went ahead to do the test and first was word test with no lipreading i didn't get any correct lol and then next was sentence she stopped halfway said 'forget it, you're not getting any diddly squat so let do one with lipreading" haha so we did it and i actually scored 42% with that one with sentence but we didn't do one with word think she forgot but thats ok. Then we talk more about the sensations I'm getting from hearing aid and blah blah then finally she said 'well how does feb 12th, tuesday sounds?' first thing came to my head was "wait, what? whoa sound like I AM candidate.... YES! WHOO" lol and said 'oh yes sounds good, 9 am?" then that was it Im so excited that i am candidate finally! Yay! so next time i'll update is for my pre-op appointment thats in january 9th so watch for it :-)

Audiologist Said

Well I emailed my audiologist to ask few question mainly about my issue with hearing aid and she told me this " Stop using it......I am guessing that you get no benefit from a hearing aid and we will try to test you without using one at all. I will also relay this medical concern to Dr. T (my surgeon)" and I asked if she's sure about it since I thought hearing test with best aided condition is required for insurance to pay and stuff and she said " If there is no noted benefit from hearing aids, the test is still valid. WE just needed to try...and you tried. I don't want you to be uncomfortable, so stop using it as you have tried long enough." So look like trying out hearing aid is more important than hearing test on best aided condition and if surgeon agree with her then I don't know what that mean maybe mean I'm candidate??? Eek I'm getting nervous hope I am. Lol one more week till my appointment with her and don't know if still need do test with ha if surgeon still want to or do test without ha, we'll see.

loaner's hearing aid

its day 4 and I am starting to suspect that i have severe recruitment because as soon as i take my hearing aid off I get this horrible loud tinnitus in my right ear (its the ear i wear hearing aid on) and it imitate the sound i heard right before i turned off the hearing aid and it wont stop and sometimes it'll change sound like pulsating sound and also if i look at someone touch paper my brain makes up noise and makes paper rustling noise i know i didnt hear it cuz that someone didnt even rustle up the paper, stupid brain haha an if man talking it sound like bad stratchy rough voice for man and loud high pitched morse code for women its horrible i hated my hearing aid and to top it all my ear is in pain, it have blister in the inside of ear not ear canal the other part of ear and my ear drum feel like its bruised or something from hearing aid blast the sound oh man i took a break from it for half of the day and whole night hope my ear heal up little bit. I want to guess my speech discrimination for my hearing test whenever it comes (she said tuesday of november 27th but we'll see) i would say 15% now with hearing aid and no lip-reading and with lipreading hmm maybe 35%? Compare to 0% unaided.

My appointment day

Well today was supposed to be the day I get tested for best aided condition and tell me her answer for cochlear implant candidate and finalized the process and go ahead with surgery BUT once she put Oticon Sumo DM on me and *groan* I didn't like way it feel, it feel like hearing aid blow so much pressure in my ear and brain and my right eye keep umm... hard to describe, like moved, disorted for second (only right ear have hearing aid) and makes me dizzy for 1 sec every spoken word lol and after while my eardrum start to get sore and after all day I get used to it TINY bit but still suck. So she decided to postpone and want me wear it for 2 weeks then tested me on best aided condition to get best result to me adjusted to hearing aid. So it sucks cuz I want my answer already heh. That's all up with my appt today

and 5 hours later i heard word "that lawyer" so crystal clear it surprised me from tv i wasnt pay attention to it till i heard it and went 'whoa i heard that" lol crazy. but other word still sound garbled and woman voice if talk too fast for me sound like da da da da da da da its so annoying lol

surgery date

my surgery date is january 15th 2008, pre-op appt is on 9th and post-op appt is on 23rd im so excited and i havent heard from my audiologist about mold yet and my phone broke and its her only email she had to contact me so i sent her with my computer email to see what address i got right lol i dont know which one (com, net, org) eek

Surgeon Says

ok heres what happened, i came in and surgeon and his assisstant brian came in with case of cochlear implant nucleus freedom to show me and let me try it on its HUGE but not that crazy heavy though it just so overwhelming my ear so i told him i want mini bte so he brought out order form and told me i get 2 speech processor so I told him i want my regular bte in pink and the other one is mini bte which i plan on wearing most of time it will be top part pink and bottom part i get 12 different colors! im excited! OH almost forgot, my coil will be brown so it blend in my hair better.
he told me he doubt that hearing aidwill benefit me enough at this level of deafness he told me he will be surprised if it actually does so he went ahead ordering it and sent it to company and told me his assisstant tina isnt in today so have to call her later i think monday she should be in by then to schedule the surgery and i STILL have to do hearing test anyways just to prove my insurance that its medically necessary blah blah blah so whenever I call i will KNOW my surgery date!!!! Im so excited and of course i NEED to not get too excited because what if they cant schedule it before my school start? and also what if Jody the audiologist will actually be reasonable like if i scored under 40% in speech reception test then i get it not on level of loudness i heard you know?
But the most important of them all is i have very very very good chance of being perfect canditate!
i will update blog as soon as i know the date and another post on how my hearing test went and if i get it or not!!!!!

decision on candidacy delayed

sorry everyone I've been busy and forgot to add update about what happened with my appointment that supposed to be final one to determine my candidacy but didnt work out. I copied info from www.alldeaf.com on what i said on here so i didnt leave anything out except some people response after first post only on last post. so here it is

*Well I didn't get confirmation today because she used quick mold as temporary mold for hearing test with best aided condition but as soon she pulled mold out she was like *gasp* your ear canal is so small, hope I can fit tube through this. So she tried and it ripped it completely so she had to redo and put in box to mail to company so that mean I have to wait EVEN longer before getting her decision ugh also she seem airheaded (meaning dumb) and she is pretty pushy about not getting ci and use oticon instead I'm like "no I'm not interested I want ci so focus on that please and just do hearing test as soon as we get mold to see if I am candidate ok?" so that's it for while but she told me to go ahead schedule for surgery and if she decided to say no after we get hearing test then she'll cancel the surgery and if she said yes it'll happen so I don't know, we'll see I'm little worried if she gonna rip me off like if I heard tiny blip and she decided to go for hearing aid instead of ci you know what I mean? Hm just really hope I get it cuz I don't want hear horrible distorted sound and loud static buzzing noise *sigh*
* She is audiologist that work with my surgeon and she's only one so if I want go other audiologist I'll have to go one in baltimore, maryland that's like 3 hours from my house and my surgeon I have right now is only 15 min away. She want to do test on my good ear but I want get ci on my worse ear she doesn't want do test on that ear I don't see the point of that can't I just get hearing aid on good ear and get ci on other one sheesh
* she have my audiogram from 5 months ago by other audiologist who offer me ci when we found out I lost at least 45 decibel of hearing (you know how its different in each frequency so 45 is minimum) so she used that to program oticon and my hearing in good ear is profound plus I want ci on my worse ear (110 decibel loss) and she didn't want to test that one it doesn't makes sensesOk I emailed my surgeon's assisstant about it she told me its ok to do that because she will call and talk to my insurance company for approval right after she pick date and if they didn't approve before the surgery date just delay it and also my hearing test depends on my surgery too so guess its ok as long they get what is needed before surgery happens and she also will forward my email about why hearing aid on only right side not both so we'll see what they said. I wonder what's do they really meant by benefit from hearing aid? Like just simply hear loud enough to hear evironment sound or just the speech discrimination test and sentence recognization if scored whatever is correct?

RESPONSE from ALLDEAF users (thanks for your help!)
* They'd want to know how well you can discriminate speech. I was able to hear a lot of environmental sounds but I got 0 on speech discrimination.
* Yeah that's right. On the ear that I just had implanted, I got 20% speech discrimination without visual cues with my hearing aid. On my first ear, I got 0% with the hearing aid and now have 80-90% with the CI.I believe most centres look for something less than in the range of 40% - 60% speech discrimination. If you are getting good speech discrimination with hearing aids without visual cues, you will likely get turned down by insurance companies.

result of my CT scan is....

its NORMAL! Yay! its huge relief to see my left ear have everything in there nothing missing cuz i want to get this one implanted ofc my right ear is totally normal too :-) one more step to go to get confirmation of my candidacy then scheduled for surgery :-D and i will know on 11th of september then 2 weeks later i meet again to schedule for surgery im so excited!

Finally

My CT scan appointment is tomorrow, finally!!! Wish me luck hope the doctor tell me something just anything so I know whats going on or one tiny bit of good new. I been waiting too long to go by longer without knowing anything at all I hope he said something like "hi amy the result of CT scan is your cochlear look pretty healthy so see you after your hearing trial completes" somehting like that.
I will update tomorrow after the appointment to let you guys know what's up.

Brand War

After a long time researching on all 3 cochlear implant brand. i decided to go for nucleus freedom.

Top 5 Reason:
1) It's most reliable implant out of all brand .
* thats what i wanted cuz I'm really clumsy and accident-prone so i would rather have most reliable implant there is.

2) Have ability to upgrade in future if there is better technology available without needing the re-implantation of internal processor.
* that's what i want because i don't want to worry if i need another surgery if they stop making one that fit one specific implant.

3) The internal implant contain 22 electrodes, soft tip to try preserve the residual hearing and self-curling electrode array to minimize the force that might damage the cochlea or auditory nerves.
* that's also another great thing about that. the AB only contained 16 electrodes and med-el only contain 12 electrodes. and med-el don't have self-curling array and AB don't have enough program in electrode to mimic the most natural sound possible like nucleus does it contain 4 programs.

4) Nucleus have smartsound beam and few other program to makes most of the clarity of hearing and makes it easier for me to listen to conversation and hear what i want to hear and have ability to change programs by pressing the button.
* that's most awesome thing i ever seen cuz i know how annoying some sound are like car engine noise interfering with music or something in radio that i want to hear (when i was hard of hearing with hearing aid) so having those option is what i need to adjust to different listening environments.

5) Nucleus has better appearance and look like hearing aid and have option of going BTE, mini BTE or very small lightweight handheld speech processor.
* i rather better appearance and their design over med-el no doubt but i do like AB color option but i don't like their coil it'll look like shirt button stuck in my head haha so i rather traditional appearance of coil and bte look like hearing aid and if its too bulky for my small ear to handle then i can easily go mini or handheld speech processor no problem and still look appropriate i don't want look like someone from star trek haha.

oh small thing to add is they also has built in telecoil, water-resistance and MRI safe up to 1.3 Tesla. med-el only can go up to 0.6 and AB go up to 0.3 Tesla.

brain function

Left hemisphere
Language

Math

Logic

Reasoning

Right hemisphere
Spatial abilities

Face recognition

Visual imagery

Music

In evolutionary terms, lateralization increases the number of different ways the brain can respond to its environment in order to improve chances for survival.
In as many as 90% or more right-handers, the left hemisphere accomplishes most language processing functions. In non-right handers (which include left-handed and ambidextrous people), language functions are far more likely to involve the right hemisphere. There is some evidence that lateralization differs in males and females.
The left hemisphere is the dominant one for right-handed people, due to contralateralization: the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa.

Frontal lobe (pink)
Concerned with reasoning, planning, parts of speech and movement (motor cortex), emotions, and problem-solving.
Includes Broca's area.

Parietal lobe (blue)
Named for the parietal ("wall") bone on the side of the head.
Concerned with perception of stimuli related to touch, pressure, temperature, and pain.

Temporal lobe (green)
Named for the temporal bone at the temple.
Concerned with perception and recognition of auditory stimuli (hearing) and memory (hippocampus).
Includes Wernicke's area.

Occipital lobe (yellow)
Named for the occiput, the protruding bone "at the back of the head."
Concerned with many aspects of vision.

picture of my audiogram

I finally got my newest audiogram from 4 months ago in mail yesterday so i thought i'll post it up from graph i made in paint shop lol so here it is

guess i jinxed myself :-(

*sigh* now my audiologist said she going to have to reschedule appointment since she thought i still have my old hearing aid and she still didnt have my recent audigram so sorry for other post, its not happening.

TOMORROW!!!

YAY! my audiologist said shes available TOMORROW!! so I'm going get my hearing test and start hearing aid trial tmw! tmw! TMW! WHOO HOO! so I'll see her tmw at 7:00 in the morning and it will be 2 hours long so after that i'll let you know how it is and my result with hearing test so yeah I'm excited everything is going so well and i got everything i wanted so far im so happy i never had so many good luck happening before! so wish me luck hope i fail the speech discrimination test so i get cochlear implant haha (i got 0% without hearing aid so it shouldn't be any higher than 50% with it on right?) well we will see what happen tmw :-D i cant wait to see my surgery date I'm THRILLED its like you have no idea how excited i am about this!

hearing aid trial

ok i got email back from my audiologist who will do my hearing test with best aided condition, she told me she dont think she can change date back to sooner than september 6th but she will try her best and she told me i will be doing hearing aid trial for several weeks, i asked her how long is several weeks then she asked me whats my hearing aid history and i told her then she want my recent audigram so i emailed Dr. Teixido the guy who will do the surgery to send her copy and he said ok so maybe she will change plan little bit like cancel the trial or at least makes it shorter? i really hope that ill help her and change the plan!! *cross my fingers* cuz i dont want to wait lol i want surgery now! :-p well i dont know what else to add so i will update when i get CT scan and hearing test on 6th and 11th so wait till 6th and 11th to see 2 new post about what's going on and learn more what will happen next too :-)

awesome news!

hey everybody i went to vocational rehabilition appointment and do usual boring stuff about my beauty school tuition loan stuff. and i asked him to write an letter to my ENT doctor to see if he can speed the CI progress up so i can get it done before my school start. so i got home and i found letter from my doctor to see when next appointment after CT scan and it said 6 weeks so my boyfriend and his mom got into some kind of discussion and got me worried and frustrated that it takes forever so i just sit there being disappointed and hopeless but all suddenly when i went to check my sidekick email an discover that i got email from my doctor that i emailed about week ago that i forgot about requesting him if its possible to speed things up and be done before december, anyways he replied and said YES he can WHOO HOO but of course i need not to let my hope get to high because there still 2 factor that have possibility of preventing me from getting the cochear implant is hearing test with loaned hearing aid to give it to my insurance to verify that hearing aid does not work for me in order to get them to pay for it. and CT scan/MRI scan i might have deformed cochlea (i highly doubt it because i used to be hard of hearing ith 50 db loss until 4 years ago i lost it all as i stated in other post) so im getting excited and slightly nervous i cant help it but jason my boyfriend keep telling me not to get too excited because theres still few things that could stop it from being possiblity of making my dream to come true but im still excited and i have good feeling that it all will work out just fine :-D it would be awesome if i can do surgery next month! but i have feeling i'll have to wait till novmber because i just got medicare insurance yesterday which i dont know much about but i also have 2 other insurance Medicaid and delaware physican care too so we will see what happen! oh and my doctor also told me i can email my audiologist if she can change date sooner than september 6th instead of on 11th so my doctor can get result on same day and talk to me about it and get some idea of if i have good chance of getting it i dont know if i get MRI or balance test we will see what happen i will let yu know as soon as i get replied in email from my audiologist :-)

In the canditacy progress

hello everybody my name is Amy and I'm 19 years old i will turn 20 this November. i was born deaf and my right ear hearing loss was 50 decibels loss and left was 90 and it stay that way until recently about 4 years ago my hearing aid stopped working for me i thought my hearing aid was broken so i didnt wear it for 4 years and 4 months ago i decided i want get new hearing aid so i went in and took hearing test and it was boring and i heard nothing so i asked if machine is on and working fine and she said yes it is fine i just cant hear anything yet so i thought she was slow at it or something and finally i heard beep and few minutes with few beep then stopped and same thing with other ear and it was strange so i came out and looked at my audiogram sheet and i was SHOCKED to see that my hearing loss fell to 100 db on both hear so im suddenly profound deaf and i was like 'so is that why i couldnt hear anything with hearing aid?" and she said yes and talk to me about powerful hearing aid but even at that range of hearing loss i have right now it wont do for me that well because i want to hear speech not just sound so she suggested me to think about cochlear implant so i said "yes i heard all about it from my friends" and she also told me she have feeling that im perfect canditate for cochlear implant so i decided to went aghead with evaluation progress and she sent me to other specialist ENT ear, nost, throat to go further discussing about cochlear implant and i really want one so he called other audiologist to makes appointment with CT scan on september 6th or something i dont remember i wrote it down on memo board lol and 45 minutes after CT scan i have appointment with my ENT i think to talk about result not sure and then few days later (11th) is my appointment to take another hearing test but with loaned hearing aid to prove that it doesnt work for me so my insurance will pay for it (i think its just for one day only not trial but we'll see) and then i dont know when is my next appointment after meeting with audiologist with hearing test im sure it'll be balance and MRI test or whatever there is for me to get the cochlear implant its taking forever it sucks i only got 2 appointment so far in 4 months! ugh i hope my ENT will speed things up and do surgery before december because thats when i start beauty school and my school do not have vacation or days off longer than 2 days for 11 months straight so it will suck really bad if i cant get it for a year.
anyways other than my progress on canditacy for surgery. heres mini biography about myself. I was born deaf and im only deaf on record in 600 years (genealogy book my grandma has) so i have NO clue how im deaf its definately not genetics haha but i did born with umbilical cord around my neck and turned blue for few minutes maybe that somehow causes my hearing loss?? Anyways and my parents found out that im deaf at around 2 and half years old because i didnt respond to them calling my name and my mom tried pounding on cooking pan and i didnt respond and she come close to me from behind and yelled Amy! and i didnt respond and she somp on floor for vibration and i look around and she got worried so took me to doctor and told my parents that im deaf and my parents were shocked and dont know what to do so they talk to specialist and he actually asked my mom if she want to give me up to adoption my mom was so pissed and went out of door said 'this is my daughter' and decided to put hearing aid on me and sent me to mainstream school with special deaf program that have about 10 other kids with me in classes for most part and sometimes in some class with hearing kids till high school we all start going to hearing classroom and only study hall with deaf teacher so it was nice. im very fluent in ASL and i can speak a little, mostly color, numbers, thank you and etc common word. i used to speak fluently when i was 8 but i was painfully shy so i never social with hearing people or use my voice so that why i only can say few things now. So number one reason i want CI is for my own safety it bother me alot that i could not hear the fire alarm at all eve if m standing under it and my bf's sister's baby cried hard for little while and i had no idea till they came in room and got mad at me i felt soooo bad that i cant hear baby cry and i also want to hear emergency vehicle from behind if need to pass me and i miss listening to people talking and music and lovely sound like rainfall, bird chirping and wind whistling. well i better shut up im talking too much haha i'll update when i get my CT scan done and hearing test too.