[This blog post is dedicated to my wonderful husband who took the boys to an adventure playground (and swimming in a freezing lake!) for a few hours so I could sit at a picnic table with the laptop and write this. Thank you, Stuart.]
As predicted, school holidays and blogging do not mix - not for me, anyway. Nor do school holidays and doing homework. I think that's a fairly universal issue though, one that most people have experienced at some point in their lives! It's been a great summer, which has really flown by for us, but I have reached the end of each day with little energy and no inclination for getting the laptop out to do listening exercises. The idea of doing it with the boys simply hasn't materialised, as we've been out and about so much, with very little time at home. We've also had the excitement of my oldest nephew, and his wife, staying with us for the whole summer, and house-sitting for us while we've been away. The boys have very much enjoyed their visit. :)
After my last blog post, when I mentioned the four programmes set on my CI, a friend asked me to clarify how the programmes worked in practice? The intention is that programme 1, the "everyday" programme, would work in the vast majority of situations. The CI software is designed to respond to each environment I find myself in. For example, it is always working to try and prioritise voices above other noises (not straightforward because each person talks at a different frequency. But even an indvidual's voice will vary a lot in pitch as they speak - almost no one speaks in a completely flat monotone, for example). Or it will respond to a very loud sound (eg. a workman starting up a jackhammer on the roadworks as I'm walking past) and 'dampen' that sound to a much more tolerable level. Something that a healthy inner ear would normally do automatically, but since my CI bypasses my inner ear, I no longer have that protective feature built in.
However, despite the programme constantly working to try and adapt to the environment, sometimes there are quite specific situations that I'll be in, where I will want to be able to tell the CI to focus a little more on particular sounds, to or behave in a particular way. This is where I will manually change the programme. See my previous
blog post for a little more explanation of each programme. For example, I do find the UltraZoom programme very beneficial in noisy situations, so I'll try and remember to switch to that as I'm going into a coffee shop (for example) - but I have to remember to go back to the "everyday" setting when I've left the coffee shop, because otherwise I am at risk of not hearing someone speaking to me from behind - the forward directionality on the microphone is very focused, so this really does happen. Another programme that perhaps needs a little more explanation is the Music programme (number 3). In this one, the Internal Dynamic Range (IDR) is increased quite a lot. The main benefit is that this gives me access to quieter sounds that I wouldn't normally hear. For example, I don't normally need to hear very soft sounds, as this is just more background noise/unecessary distraction, but in music it's an important part of the experience, perhaps particularly in listening to classical music. I think that the automatic focus on prioritising voice over other sounds is also switched off. Small tweaks like that which should help music to sound richer and fuller in the music programme, than in the everyday programme.
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| 'Program Button' is a little bit small... |
But when it comes to changing programmes, this is where I am a little critical about an aspect of my CI, for the first time. Changing the programme is done by pressing a little button (see image above) on the on-the-ear processor, and toggling through the four programmes until I reach the one I want. That's OK for me physically - I can find the button without needing to remove the device (although I know it'd be more of an issue for people with stiffer or larger fingers). The first problem is that in a noisy environment I can't hear the beeps that tell me which number programme I'm on. Still not the end of the world - worst case I can slip the CI off my ear and look at the little led light, which flashes a corresponding number of times to match the programme number. The biggest headache, however, is that the processor takes 6 long seconds (yes, I've timed it) to change from one programme to another. Six seconds is a long time if someone is talking to you while you're changing the programme. That's long enough to miss someone saying "I really like the way you've done your hair today, it suits you!" - a compliment I wouldn't want to miss!! ;) It's something I have to live with, although I'm hopeful that when I'm eligible for an upgrade (in about 5 years time...) that the manufacturers might have managed to speed things up by then. I'm also hopeful that one day I might be able to control my CI, and change programmes, using an app on my phone. A competing CI manufacturer has done this, for both iPhone and Android, so I think it won't be long before "my" manufacturer catches up.
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| A whole weekend of glorious sunshine for our camping :) |
Our summer holiday has finished with a camping trip to Exeter, with our church, and the group of churches we are part of. It was a really great time, being together as a church family, with lots of excellent talks, seminars, and time with God. I felt much more confident interacting with others at mealtimes (our church ate all together, about 60 of us) and evening social times, with the CI allowing me to hear people's voices much more easily against the background noise. I've had several comments recently (while camping, and at other times this summer) that I seem to be hearing better and that others are noticing that I'm happier and more confident in noisy situations. Which has been a real encouragement to me, that others have noticed, too. Seminars were fine, too, as I could sit at the front and lipread. Hearing the speaker in the main arena was a lot harder, though, as you can't get very close to the stage, and it's very noisy! My T-loop programme didn't help me much as the environmental microphone on my CI remained on (with hearing aids I usually had the T-loop only, with the mic off, so I could focus on the T-loop sounds alone) and so I couldn't actually tell if I was actually hearing sounds through the T-loop or not! Something to get changed at my next audiologist appointment. I ended up relying totally on the BSL sign language interpreter, to understand anything of what was said. I never learned BSL, so my understanding was based on a combination of understanding from the few signs I know, lipreading the occasional words that the signer mouthed, and very quickly learning a lot more signs!
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| Disposable hearing aid battery six-packs |
I have to confess that, after having previously been a (tiny) bit dismissive of others who have found the technical logistics of a CI hard to adjust to, I myself fell down on that front during and after camping! For my entire life so far, I've been used to using disposable hearing aid batteries, which lasted 10-14 days before replacing. As a child I'd be given a box of 60 batteries (10 packs of 6) each time I went to see the audiologist, so I'd scatter the six-packs liberally between my various day bags, in my suitcases, in the car, etc, so that I'd always have spares wherever I was, whether at home or on holiday. (This practice had to change when my younger son, at 16 months old, found a six pack of hearing aid batteries in the glove box in the car and swallowed three of them - resulting in a couple of trips to A&E!) But the point was, hearing aid batteries were easy, and I barely had to think about them, because I had a system that worked.
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| CI Charger with white batteries (mine are silver) |
But with CIs I have had to learn a new system. See, with a CI, the battery lasts one day, and then it needs to be charged each night, ready for use again the following day. Each night I have to slot the battery into the charger, and put the processor and headpiece into the drying box. When camping, we only had a power supply in the communal marquee for the church, so I took my charger there in the morning, as I was unwilling to leave it overnight. However, I'd forget about it until my battery ran flat the next day. And sure enough, this happened on the last day: I forgot about the charger until we had left the campsite and were at the cottage where we were spending 5 nights on the edge of Dartmoor. Thankfully the charger turned up safe and sound back in the church offices, with all the other electrical cables from the marquee. But I was in Dartmoor, and the one battery I had was well and truly flat, with no way of charging it. So, for the first time in 16.5 weeks, I had to put a hearing aid back in. That has been a very interesting experience, and I feel a blog post coming soon about that - especially once I'm back home, reunited with my charger, and able to put my CI back on, to compare the two.
The other thing that has happened this summer, that is new, is that I have started using the phone with my CI. I got a device (a CI Connect) which enables my phone to stream audio to my CI, via bluetooth. Which is great for listening to music, and phonecalls. So far I've just been phoning family (Stuart and my Mum). I'd hoped to have tried phoning some friends this week while in Dartmoor, but then the CI battery charger mistake happened. So that's something I've yet to do more of, and with time, another blog post will emerge, about that, I'm sure. One thing that was particularly striking for me when I first put my hearing aid back in, though, was how, with a hearing aid, voices sound more echoey (as if we're in a large, empty room), even when we are in a small enclosed space like a car. With a CI there seemed to be a greater clarity, or crispness, in the sound of a voice. This explains in part why using the telephone was so hard with the hearing aids.
The boys go back to school and preschool next week (how did we get to September so fast?!) so I'll be returning to more regular/frequent homework listening sessions, and perhaps some more blog posts will emerge over the next few weeks as well....
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