I've had a few requests from friends on Facebook to cover how I came to be deaf in the first place. Here is that story.
When I was a freshman in high school I was walking down the stairs to go to health class when I heard a high pitched ringing in my left ear. It was like one long, annoying beep and when it went away, I was completely deaf in that ear. I freaked out and ran to the office. They called the school nurse in.
Obviously above her level of expertise, all they could do was call my mom and tell her what had happened. We went to my doctor who recommended me to an audiologist in Beckley. She conducted a hearing test and found that my left ear hearing was significantly less than my right ear hearing, which was nearly perfect.
Since I was so young, my mom's insurance covered the hearing aid that they provided for me. It fit in my ear pretty well, was flesh colored (not nearly as large as the ones I'm wearing now, but we'll get to that in a moment) and just had one button to make things quieter or louder. It was advanced for technology in 2001, but not nearly as advanced as what is available today.
I loved that having my left ear hearing aid allowed me to hear. But it squeaked a lot, ate up batteries, and made the skin around the hearing aid scab and bleed because of the rubbing.
So I stopped wearing it.
At the time, we didn't think that my hearing was going to get any worse.
I started worked at a car company in July 2010. I was a phone operator for the entire dealership. No call came through the dealership without coming through my office first. The phones rang nonstop. And they weren't pleasant ringers, either. These were loud, annoying, nails-on-a-chalkboard ringers that are on the same level of annoying as the loud trucks that sound like a Yetti is taking a shit and REALLY trying.
Anyway so this car company... I mentioned in my last post that the ringers started annoying my ears (probably because they're annoying - AMIRITE?!) I started getting this sound in my ears that sounds like you're in a car, on the interstate, with the windows down, and go through a tunnel. You know the sound. And if you don't, take a drive down to Bland, VA sometime. It's loud. And it hurts. And you can't hear a damn thing.
Back to the doctor. We switched doctors because we like to shake things up every once in a while (that's actually true, but the real reason we switched is because we just wanted a different opinion).
The Wytheville doctor mentioned Miener's disease. Vertigo, that noise, and deafness were all symptoms of it. But this doctor was just trying to focus on helping the vertigo... No bueno.
My mom is really search savvy and found a doctor in Roanoke. The best of the best. Mr. I-Specialize-In-Special-Cases-Because-I'm-Special. He decides to actually DO something and treat me as I do have Miener's even though there's not really a way to confirm that I have it (nothing showed up on the one THOUSAND tests that they ran on me to find the damn thing).
His treatment helps, he put me on Valium to help combat the vertigo, which is fair... Any day that I don't puke because the room is spinning is a good day for me. And even though it helps it doesn't make it go away entirely.
I met with the Department of Rehab Services and they tell me about everything that's available to me... Free internet, a talk-to-text landline phone, and finally, my hearing aids. Double hearing aids chickachickayeahhhhh...
So ANOTHER audiologist who runs ANOTHER hearing test (it makes the grand total somewhere around 23168746516354 hearing tests, I think?) and comes to the conclusion that I have 10-18% in my left ear and 50-65% in my right ear. Both fluctuate thanks to the Miener's.
The day I got the call to get fitted for my hearing aids was one of the greatest days ever. I was working the morning shift at work and checked my messages when I went on break. Super stoked.
Last Friday I got fitted for them. I picked them up yesterday. They are a pair of Phonak Cassia In the Ear hearing aids in flesh tone.
http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/hearing_instruments/styles-10/ite.html
Anyway, that's my history. Thanks for sticking through that.
It's hard to fit all the background info into one blog post :) I thought you said they believed it was Menier's.... Did you know the only thing Voca Rehab here would even help me with was hearing aids. All the things you said from yours, they just pointed me to a website from WVU about helping people w disabilities, blah blah. They didn't even have anything suitable. No alarm clock info, no captioning, no phone info. So you got lucky! :) I am buying me an alarm clock that goes by light. I figure why should I depend on flawed hearing to wake me up when its obviously been a problem for years... We will journey through our new HAs together! Lol I picked mine out today, really different than I had before. But they hope that will actually help me wear them this time. Keep me posted on how you are transitioning with yours! ;)
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