No earth shattering improvements or revelations this week. I believe my hearing / comprehension is slowly improving with less Donald Duck filter than previously. It is becoming harder to tell though.
I have cranked both the sensitivity and volume up again so I am almost at max. I don’t know if this is helping or hampering, but I am trying to get my brain to focus on comprehending what it is hearing through the implant.
This past week I have been turning captions off so that I force myself to concentrate on understanding the speech rather than just resorting to reading the captions. This definitely requires more concentration on my part but I put that down to having become dependent on captions so, like any “addiction”, it’s a habit that is hard to break. Much like saying “what” automatically any time someone says something.
Meantime, the birds are becoming annoying, with their constant chatter !
I do still try to start my day without my left hearing aid but I have not been continuing my relative pitch ear training or piano practice.
Overall, I am still very pleased with my progress and improved hearing and comprehension although some people are much harder to understand than others.
I am very busy in the orchard at the moment so have not had much opportunity to work on my hearing. That said, when I am in the orchard on my own I wear a bluetooth headset which I have playing Pandora tunes and I find I am hearing instruments that I either never noticed before or have forgotten were there. I will have to dig out some of my CDs and listen to the tracks to see if they were always there or if the “remixed” versions, which I hate, have changed the mix so much. I particularly dislike the way the engineers “re-mastered” so much of the Queen and Beatles music.
My velcro attachment of the battery pack / controller to the inductions coils is working out well. It holds in place well and the way I have the “soft goods” harness setup the coils remain over the battery location pretty well.
Another good week. See you again in a few days.
If you are on this journey, I hope you are having as much success as I.
One thought on “Weekly Progress Update”
Hi Robert,
I am a few weeks behind you at MUSC. I must say your reports are almost identical to mine. One thing I notice is that I have one pitch that screeches. My tolerance of the screech becomes the limiter for volume right now. It also causes me to turn the sensitivity down. I will probably make that a big part of the discussion when I return to MUSC in July.
Another thing I find myself doing is adjusting the volume and sensitivity to individual person speaking when I have the control / charging harness on. What works ok with one often does not work so well with another. Mostly I turn the closed captions off now but occasionally I have to turn them on to fully follow the dialog.
I have been streaming through one Apple Air Pod in the cochlear ear while watching TV or listening to a podcast too. That seems to work pretty well. Hopefully it is training my brain. When I do that I leave the hearing aid out of the other ear.
Take Care