Audiology Appointment

I returned to Minnesota and  followed through on my commitment.  I set up an appointment with my favorite audiologist, co-worker and friend, Claudia H. on January 8th.  Claudia pointed out to me that it has been a year and half since my last audiology appointment.  I told her about my last visit with my parents and how I wanted to be sure my hearing aids were working properly.  I had expected to find the same results as the past evaluations and thought that I probably needed to readjust my hearing aids or send them in for repair.

I sat in the sound booth listening intently for the beeps and pressing the buttons when I heard them.  I became a little nervous like I always do and felt there were longer pauses between the beeps, which meant I could not recognize some of the beeps that she was sending me.  I kept telling myself, that I get worked up like this every time I get my hearing test and it will all turn out fine.  Then, Claudia did the speech recognition test.  I felt like I was repeating nonsense words and saying the same words over and over.  Claudia tried a different set of words and again, I gave my best effort.   

When I walked out of the booth, Claudia went to pull my chart and looked at all my previous audiograms from the past 9 years.  I started to become very nervous and tried to calm myself down. I looked at the recent test and the hearing levels looked the same as my previous evaluations... a severe to profound hearing loss.  Then, she looked at me and said, "you are not going to want to hear this, but I think you should see if you are a candidate for a cochlear implant".  Wow...this is exactly what I have been dreading all of these years.  I worried that I will eventually follow my brother's footsteps and lose hearing like he had at my age.  I was in shock and tried very hard to hold back the tears.  

Claudia did a wonderful job explaining my current hearing situation.  She explained that when I started working in the district, I was able to understand speech on both ears with 95% accuracy.  My recent test indicated that my hearing levels were the same, but my speech understanding had changed. On my left ear, I can understand 85% of the information and my right ear was 38%.  A huge drop! My right ear was almost useless.  Basically, I am able to localize and detect sound on my right ear, but it does not help me understand information.  Then, I remembered back to winter break when my Dad questioned me of what my Mom had said.  I realized that my parents were both on my right side. My Dad's observations were correct (of course, ha).  I greatly appreciate the honesty of my Dad and Claudia.