One of the reasons why I was excited to get a cochlear implant was to not have to use an earmold (the piece that fits in the ear, see photo above) anymore. Sometimes when using an earmold, it can make your ear feel plugged or itch. My older brother Scotty does not use an earmold with his implant and I was planning on not wearing one as well. Recently, the tubing of my earmold broke, so I had to go without an earmold for two weeks, this made me realize how much my earmold helps me. I have found that my speech processor will fall off more easily due to pushing my hair behind my ear, putting on sunglasses, leaning on my fist or bending over to pick up something. The most challenging thing is talking on a phone without using an earmold to keep it in place, it constantly slips off.
So, I have recently made a new earmold that has a vent to allow air to flow through and not feel as plugged. This works perfect and I am happy to have an earmold again. I did try "huggers" from cochlear, this clipped onto my ear from the top and bottom and left the inner ear free of an earmold. This didn't feel that comfortable because I was not used to having something touching my ear in those areas. Also, it looked odd when I was wearing it, so the earmold is the best choice for me.
Another thing, a few months ago, my boyfriend gave me an MP3 player to experiment with when listening to music. At first, I didn't use it that much because I never really used anything like it, maybe a walk-man in high school. There is a special cord that plugs into the player and plugs into the base of the speech processor. Lately, I have used the player when I go for walks around the lake or while I am working on something. I appreciate it more and starting to pick up more words in songs. Also, I like that it types out the song that is playing and the artist. This helps with my song recognition and usually the title is repeated throughout the song. That's all for now. Kristine
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