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In the waiting

Recovery has been going well.  After two weeks I turned a corner, and by three weeks I was pretty much back to normal.  It has been tiring living with just one hearing aid in though.  I struggle particularly in noisy environments; it is just much harder identifying and differentiating between sounds when you no longer have stereo sound (even though my left ear was never quite as good as my right, so it wasn't 100% balanced stereo!).

I did put my left hearing aid back in, and found that I could hear almost the same as before, just very slightly quieter.  It's incredible to think of the skill of the surgeon to be able to drill into my skull, poke wires into my inner ear - and cause little to no damage in the process!  I haven't gone back to wearing the left hearing aid though.  The scar tissue behind my left ear is still rather sensitive and tender (despite that whole area still being numb - it's a weird sensation!), so I'm not ready to be wearing anything there yet.

Which is why I didn't mind when the hospital contacted me to say that the big switch on appointments on the 1st May were cancelled due to "staff unavailability".  It's been re-scheduled for a week later, on the 8th May.  It gives me a week longer to heal up, and more time to prepare, practically.

It's kind of hard to prepare though, when you don't know exactly what it's going to be like.  The two main things I'm anticipating are: a large amount of tiredness, and two young boys (particularly the younger one) getting cross with Mummy for not understanding them the second/third/fourth time they say something!  My wonderful church family are doing two weeks of meals for me after switch on, so I don't have to worry about going to the shops when I don't understand strangers, or cooking when I'm tired.  I've had offers of practical support with the boys, and my Mum is coming down again for a few days.  So I think I'm as prepared as I can be.

In this time of waiting I've been thinking about what I can/can't hear now, what are my areas of particular difficulty, and how that might be different with a cochlear implant (once I've fully adjusted). I'd like to record this somewhere, for future reference/comparison, so another blog post will be coming soon on that topic.... :)

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 29, 2019 at 3:29 AM

    Hi Jean, Why my alternative email address appears I can't imagine and I'm unable to delete/change it.
    We've changed the diary entry for the switch-on and will be thinking of you then, and in the immediate future and hope that none of the negatives you've considered will happen. How good that the Cornerstone family are there to back up and give practical support (plus your Mum, of course). God bless. Love from Cathy and Malcolm xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownApril 29, 2019 at 3:29 AM

    Oops! It's Centrepoint, of course!!

    ReplyDelete

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