Many factors determine how I might hear in any given day.  Some of these are controllable and some are not.  If I don't feel well, am tired or am stressed, my brain has a harder time comprehending what it is hearing and processing.  If I'm in an environment with bad acoustics, distracting noise or the speaker mumbles or doesn't face me when talking, then I have to work extra hard to understand.  None of these situations are new to a CI wearer.  These are simply the facts of life for anyone with a hearing loss.

I have to admit I have been a little frustrated with how I've been progressing since my last mapping.  Or maybe I'm just distracted or need to lower my expectations.  This past week I started working on a new therapy on a website called Angel Sounds.  (On a side note...this can be used for anyone who wants to learn how to hear better, whether they wear a CI, hearing aid, or neither).   I've used their app on the iPad, but I decided to see if they had any different features on their website and the answer is yes, they do!  

After scoring pretty high for simple word recognition using the quiet listening conditions, I was quickly thrown off when I began testing myself on the pure tone discrimination.  The software gives you three buttons that play a tone in which two are the same and one is different.  You have to click on the button you think is different.  Sounds simple enough, but I keep getting hung up on tones I would describe as in the middle frequencies and very close to each other.  I really struggle to hear the difference between D3 and C3 and I've been stuck on the 4th level in this module.  I got so frustrated that today I decided to work on another module.

Today I tested on fruits, with four pictures to choose from after listening to someone say the name of the fruit.  I scored 100% each time, but this was using the easiest setting, the quiet listening condition.  When I changed that to the cafe setting my scores dropped to 84% and that's after hitting the repeat button numerous times.  Apparently there isn't a limit in how many times you can hit the repeat button.  After I tested myself on fruits, I moved on to animals and common numbers, using first the quiet setting and then switching to the cafe setting.  In every situation it was the same result as the fruits. 

Here are some observations I made from today's therapy:

• I can understand a woman's voice much easier than a man's.
• Often I could hear one part of what was said.  For instance, I could hear the two in forty-two so I could guess the correct answer in some cases. 
• If I couldn't understand the spoken word at first, it would eventually come to me the more I hit the repeat button.  It was like a fuzzy picture slowly coming into focus.
• By having four choices, you can often figure out what is being said by the process of elimination.
• I would never ask anyone to repeat something as many times as I had repeats during these tests!  

 I'm glad I moved on from testing myself on pure tone discrimination.  I needed to get my confidence level back up since low confidence is yet one more thing that can hinder how well I comprehend.  I've barely scratched the surface on what is available on Angel Sounds.  I'll be writing more on how my therapy progresses in future postings.