A hearing update.
My Cochlear Implant journey has begun. I started keeping a journal about it a month or so ago, after I finally decided to proceed with the implant.
There’s not a whole lot to report as yet. I met the Medicare requirements for the surgery when their requirements changed, nearly a year ago - right after I had gotten a new pair of hearing aids. Since it’s been more than six months since my first CI evaluation, I have to have a second one done.
I didn’t come to this decision lightly. In the last few months, especially this spring, I have noticed that my right ear - my ‘good ear’ - is weakening, to the point that I am really struggling to make sense of most conversations. Most sound, including speech, is all part of the background noises - and I am often unaware that I’m being spoken to. Even if I am aware of it, I can’t make much sense of it. I often say to my wife, “I am aware that you are speaking...”
Through a Facebook support group for people with hearing loss, I found the name of a CI audiologist in Oklahoma City - one who has a bachelor’s degree in piano performance and knows how to tweak a CI for improved music perception. As it turned out, she works at Hearts for Hearing, the same place as my HA audiologist.
The earliest appointment with her wasn’t available until mid-September, so I was scheduled for the evaluation then. I got a call a couple of weeks ago that there were some cancellations and I could move my appointment earlier - July 31st is my new appointment, less than three weeks from now.
I still remember bits of the first CI evaluation. It’s nothing scary, but it takes a while to complete everything. There are some cognitive tests included, as profound hearing loss is a contributing factor for dementia. Having been on this road for nearly 25 years now, I can see where that can become a problem. It’s “a long and winding road,” as per the old song, and you can’t quite see what’s around the bend. When you get there, all you see is another bend in the road.
HAs and CIs focus on recovery of speech recognition - that is what they were designed for. Music is much more complex than speech, involving much higher and much lower frequencies, nuances of pitch, timbre, and dynamics, complex rhythms, and many more overtones. In fact, I gave up playing the organ a number of years ago because I became unable to make sense of the sounds coming through my HAs. Thus far, I’m still able to function as a pianist, thought I no longer hear the upper octave on the keyboard.
I will likely have one CI. That is called ‘bimodal’ - two modes of hearing - rather than two, which is called bilateral, or ‘both sides.’ Upon activation of the CI, a patient begins a lengthy process of ‘audio rehabilitation,’ which essentially is an effort to train the brain to make sense of the new signals it receives from the CI. A complicating factor for many bi-modal users is that they will have a CI on one side and a hearing aid on the other - that will be my situation. So my brain will have to figure out how to make sense of two artificial modes of hearing at the same time.
In all the reading I’ve done on this (which is A LOT!), I expect to be busy learning to understand speech for about the next year. At the same time, I will be working on musical perception - but that may take an additional year. There are no guarantees that the CI will work, but I have read many more success stories than failures. From what I read, the more work one does on rehab, the better the final results are.
I’ve written all this, really, to say that I am playing the ‘special music’ at church this Sunday - in the slot usually reserved for the choir (which is ‘on holiday’ for the month of July). I’m not at all sure, but this may be the last time I play in church for quite a long while - perhaps forever.
If you want to hear my ‘last hurrah’ on the piano, come to St. Stephen’s UMC in Norman this Sunday - or tune in to the Facebook video on the church’s FB page.
My fingers are crossed that I’ll be one of the ‘super star’ patients whose understanding of speech - and music! - return at the point of activation. That’s not realistic, but it does happen.
Hmm. I wonder what's around this next bend in the road.
