July 2011

Hello everyone!

     My name is Karen and I live in Western New York.  I am 46, I have been married for 22 years and my husband and I have two sons, ages 21 and 18.  

      I have read many, if not all, of your stories over the past few months as I have been going through the evaluations and then the waiting to be approved for a cochlear implant.  The approval came last week and my surgery will be July 22, 2011!  I am both nervous and excited that this will help me.  I am trying to have realistic expectations but it seems that many implantees hear better than I have in a long time.

      I was diagnosed with Meniere's disease at the age of 14.  I would have vertigo in spurts every few years and each time I would lose a little more hearing in my right ear.  I got my first hearing aid when I was 30 and I found it to be very helpful.  Shortly thereafter, the Meniere's went bilateral and within a short time I needed 2 hearing aids.   My left ear had always been my better ear, but in 2008, I lost all hearing in that ear when I had surgery to control the vertigo.   This was a major adjustment.  Everything sounds very different with one bad ear even with a high-powered hearing aid. I found I missed so much, but still I learned to manage pretty well.

      The past few months I have been experiencing distorted hearing.  Voices sound robotic and most times there is this annoying static along with any sound or voice that I can compare to a radio station not being tuned in.  This happened to me once before two years ago.  I received steroid injections through my eardrum and it seemed to help. After 5 or 6 weeks, it went away.  I did not regain the level of hearing I had but the clarity returned.  This time the steroid injections did not seem to help.  The distortion varies quite a bit day to day, and even throughout the day, but most times I cannot use the phone. Even when it is "not so bad," I still need closed captioning to watch TV and need to be close to someone to attempt a conversation.  Because I have had 2 previous surgeries on my ear, my doctor first sent me for an MRI to see if scar tissue had grown that would rule out a cochlear implant.  It had not and I was thrilled.  I had all the other screenings and everyone has told me along the way that I would make a good candidate.

   I am still hopeful that this distortion will clear up and with the implant I will hear in stereo again.  I am nervous, of course, but am anxious to experience what a cochlear implant can do for me.  My ultimate goal would be to get to a place where I am NOT constantly worrying about what I am hearing and what I am missing.  I look forward first to the surgery, and then to my activation day.  From what I have read here, this distorted hearing has prepared me well for the strange sounds that I may hear on activation day but, it will be so nice to know that my hearing will improve with time instead of the declining hearing I have dealt with for many years.

7/22/11 Implanted with Cochlear Nucleus 5

8/18/11 Initial activation