Not Firing On All Cylinders

Last week I had another mapping and it was long overdue.  I could tell I wasn't distinguishing sounds as well as I had about three weeks before seeing my audiologist.

One of the first things my audiologist asks me at every appointment is how things are sounding, how I'm doing with my CI.  This time I found myself struggling to convey exactly how I knew I wasn't hearing as well and needed my mapping tweaked.  When you are hard-of-hearing (HOH), you get used to saying, "what" all the time so maybe the more appropriate person to ask is the HOH person's significant other.  They know when you've been asking for repeats.  

But, it's more than saying, "what" every other sentence.  It's the little things.  Like how suddenly you don't notice the microwave beeping even though you heard it just fine the previous day.  Or, how sounds in the upper range aren't distinguishable and seem to be soft around the edges. 

A cochlear implant has 22 electrodes.  With natural hearing, a person has the equivalent of 3,000 (no, that is not a typo.  There really should be a comma followed by three zeros).  When I tell people this little fact, it tends to hit home how much a cochlear implant falls short of replacing "normal" hearing.  

Every mapping starts out with what is commonly referred to as "firing up the electrodes".  Every time we go through this exercise, I think of a car revving its engine and the phrase "firing on all cylinders".  My audiologist knows how much I don't like this because she always says something like, "okay, here's the part everyone loves".  At least I'm not alone.   This step involves me staring off and listening intently for beeps.  If I hear the beeps I tell her how many (from 1 to 3).  Sometimes I think I'm hearing beeps, so I hesitate and think, "did I really hear them, or did I think I heard them?"  I am not good as this black and white test, either you heard them or you didn't.  I guess I'm trying too hard and want to hear them so badly that I start having phantom hearing (yes, there really is such a thing).  My desire to be right conflicts with my desire to hear and it's this constant struggle that I find so exhausting and frustrating. And when there is a long gap of me just sitting there waiting for a beep, I'm positive something has gone haywire.  That's when I'm pretty sure I've lost more than just my hearing.

Before my audiologist transferred my new program to my CI processor, she told me that she had previously turned off the first four electrodes, but now she wanted to try turning them back on.  These electrodes are for the higher frequencies and apparently I wasn't tolerating them well in the beginning.  When she turned them on, I could tell a big difference.  Everything sounded too loud.  After running a few tests to see if I could tolerate them, we came to the conclusion that I should start with just one of the four and see if I can work my way into all of them. 

So now I'm back to everyone sounding like munchkins from The Lollipop Guild.  Over time normal voices should come back to me.  In the meantime, my bionic ear is revving up its engine and trying as hard as it can to do its best.