I’m still waiting to get ‘the call’ that insurance has approved the surgery. The cogs in the health insurance machinery seem to move pretty slowly – it’s quite frustrating! Meanwhile, I discovered two online blogs, both very helpful and both by women in the UK. The first one, More Than a Bit Deaf: A Hearing Loss Blog, (https://morethanabitdeaf.com) was written by a woman named Vera, who lives in Yorkshire. She was asked by the Med-El CI company if they could film her during the various stages from evaluation through surgery, activation, and post-activation. They did the film in six parts, available on the Med-El web site (https://www.medel.com/community/veras-journey).
The second blog, discovered only a couple of days ago, is titled From Ear to Eternity: A Cochlear Implant Diary, (https://fromeartoeternity.com), written by a woman named Sarah Chapman. Both women wrote their blogs to cover their entire CI journeys, from evaluation through activation and on to the annual evaluation, one year post-activation. Both are glowing success stories of the procedure and the impact the CIs have had on their lives and their interpersonal relationships.
Additional support comes from four Facebook groups I belong to, listed in the order I discovered them: (1) Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss; (2) Hearing Loss: The Emotional Side; (3) Cochlear Implant Support Group; and (4) Cochlear Town USA. The first two listed offer support for folks with either hearing aids or cochlear implants (or both); the third is specifically for CI users; the fourth is also for CI users, but is intended solely for those who chose the Cochlear Americas brand of devices. I joined that group yesterday, after discovering mention of it in From Ear to Eternity, the blog mentioned above. In addition to these groups, I follow the FB page of Hearing Loss Association of America (an organization of which I am a member).
