When I went in for a followup related to the new hearing loss, my ENT’s office ordered an MRI, since I hadn’t had one since 2014. I didn’t expect to put the “MRI-safe” thing to the test so soon after my implant, but then I didn’t expect another hearing loss episode, either. The hardest part was getting the appointment: the second she heard the words “cochlear implant”, the scheduler immediately said they would not do an MRI on me, even when I tried to explain that the model I have allows MRIs with some restrictions (which I could provide). I sent an email to the provider’s website explaining the situation and asking them to reconsider; I got a call back from a manager who was very apologetic. He had to contact AB and my audiologist, but he got the info and I had the MRI yesterday. It went fine; no problems. (No idea on the results yet, but I don’t expect them to find anything unusual; I’ve had them after hearing losses before. No one has been able to tell me why this keeps happening.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still no improvement in my non-implanted ear, nor any word from the insurance on whether they’ll cover the hyperbaric treatments (which I’m still doing every weekday). I did get my hearing aid adjusted for my new level of hearing loss, but volume and clarity are two different things and I still struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, I can understand audio books with my implant. I keep the print in front of me for new books, but I don’t have to look at it very often. Podcasts and normal conversation (where the speakers aren’t necessarily professional readers and I don’t have captions or printed text) are more difficult, but I’m picking up more words all the time. And the implant is starting to be almost helpful rather than a hindrance to understanding others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As much as possible, I stream things directly into the CI so my other ear isn’t trying (and mostly failing) to pick up the slack. We couldn’t get the TV Connect accessory to work, but Ray was able to connect the Roger Select microphone directly to the TV so it streams into the implant. And of course I can stream my phone into it as well to listen to audio books or podcasts. I’ve been listening to Harry Potter in the car since I know it well enough that it doesn’t matter if I miss a word here and there, and new books at home so I can look at the print if I don’t understand something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My implant was set up with 5 programs, each increasing in volume, and I was supposed to progress through them by my next appointment in a bit over 2 weeks. When I got it, everything was so loud that I didn’t think I’d ever get past program 1. But today I went to program 5. As always after I go to the next one, everything is REALLY LOUD. My next mapping appointment is on Wednesday (I’m writing this on Sunday).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I went in for a followup related to the new hearing loss, my ENT’s office ordered an MRI, since I hadn’t had one since 2014. I didn’t expect to put the “MRI-safe” thing to the test so soon after my implant, but then I didn’t expect another hearing loss episode, either. The hardest part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monster-island.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}