And then the left aid...

Hey all,

I have been kind of bad about blogging lately. Life has been crazy!

My left aid started the on and off game. I am not sure if I mentioned that or not already. I got a new left aid last week, and now for the first time in months have to functioning aids. I am so relieved to have that problem solved. I can now get down to perfecting the sound. I still can't understand speech, but I don't know if I am capable of understanding speech anymore. I don't think I have ever posted my audiogram on here. Here it is:

Freq. R L
250Hz 90 100
500Hz 95 105
1000Hz 85 110
1500Hz 90 110
2000Hz 95 NR
3000Hz 100 NR
4000Hz NR NR
6000Hz NR NR
8000Hz NR NR

Speech Discrimination-Could Not Test at 110dB

I am pretty sure it has changed since then. I know my left ear is worse. I am going to assume my right one is too. We haven't bothered to re-test though.


In other news, last week I was leaving my apartment (I live in a basement apartment) and I was walking around the side of the house. As I got to the gate I tripped and hit my head off of the fence. The fence post hit my earmold on a perfect angle to jam it into my ear and yet not hurt the aid or earmold at all. It hurt a lot! I took out my aids and didn't use them for a day so my ear could recover from the trauma LOL. On Friday when I put my aids back on I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear and it was still incredibly tender. I let it go for the day to see if it was just my allergies. At 3:00pm I still couldn't hear with my left ear so I went to see a doctor. I couldn't see my own family doctor, but I saw another one in the practice. I was pretty sure I had ruptured my eardrum and that was why I couldn't hear. Turns out I had a completely un-related ear infection.

The doctor was very alarmed that the ear infection would cause me to have no hearing in my left ear. It wasn't a bad infection and he was very concerned. He tried to refer me to see an audiologist but I refused. He said that the little extra conductive loss that I would get from an ear infection shouldn't cause my hearing to reduce that dramatically. He knew I am deaf, and he even saw my audiogram. I was getting very frustrated with him. He tried tirelessly to convince me that I needed to see an audiologist for further hearing assesment. I refused. In the end I signed a paper saying that I was denying further testing and care, and promised him I would talk to my own audiologist. I wouldn't have seen whatever audiologist he had refered me to until next week anyway, by then I can just deal with mine. I sent her an email telling her the situation. Hopefully she will agree that the doctor was crazy and not make me do anything. I hate hearing tests and she knows it.

OOH! Also, school problems are resolved! We have a new teacher for the last month and she is GREAT! She was so easy to 'train', it only took one reminder to not talk to the board. She is awesome! The desks are also in a circle now, so much easier! YAY! My audiologist wrote a letter to the school. It wasn't a mean letter or anything but it bluntly explained my hearing difficulties. It helped a lot! Anyway I have a million things to do so I probably shouldn't be writing.

-Jenny