The Evil Audiologist Strikes Again

Yes, I was hoping to strike a small note of melodrama with that title.  I probably should have tried to work ‘curse’ into to it as well for best effect, in tribute to the melodramatic and wordy titles of 1930s graphic novels and detective stories, but I’m not quite sure how it sits with the grammar.  Can a curse strike again?  And if the curse is of someone then does it mean that they are cursed or that the curse belongs to them, that they activate it?  Too much for wee head right now.

Anyway, maybe I should try going back to my original subject or else this is going to turn into some verbose Victorian novel with asides bigger than the plot.

As you know, I have ears.  Yes, not those normal ears like everyone else, the other artificial kind.  The kind that actually hear things, to be truthful.  (I think I’m the only person who has ever called me four-eyes, as another aside, and technically for many years I was six-eyes.  I’m meant to wear a prescribed tint in my lenses to help balance the effects of my perception disorder but I can’t find anywhere anymore which does the testing.  I do notice it when I spent too much time on the computer especially but anyhow, to resume!)  And my new shiny ears have the new cord system.  There are pros and cons to this, I rather like how the old mould kept my ear free from draughts and besides which, the cords have to be replaced every couple of months.  For someone who worries about waste, this is definitely not a benefit nor indicative of a new and improved system or technology.  When I had my ears fitted, I sensibly remembered to ask the whens and hows of this and the audiologist, that audiologist, explained that I just had to waltz into the main reception at the hospital and ask them to hand the tubes and domes over like they do batteries.  (Getting batteries from Main Desk requires an extensive session of begging, production of an up-to-date audiology logbook (yeah, like I can find it) and various identity and background checks).

So after the number of required months and slightly clogged pipes (tubes, officially), I trotted into the hospital.  And there the fun started.  Main Desk looked at me very blankly.  And eventually determined that I should be sent to Outpatients.  Outpatients looked at me very blankly.  And eventually determined that I should hang around the bottom of the corridor where audiologists live and see if they had any better ideas.  Hard work.

So with this five minute errand rapidly turning into something like a tooth-pulling operation (metaphorically) I set myself to lurking.  It’s hard enough to get an audiologist’s attention when you have an appointment so I wasn’t entirely optimistic about my chances.  I may have mentioned before but audiologists have the ridiculous habit of popping their heads out of doors and calling for their patients softly.  Now why are most of us in audiology for?

I did find an audiologist, the lovely one, the one who had gotten me retested originally, and despite being on her lunch break was more than happy to help restock me with cords and domes, giving me extras so I don’t have to go back in again too soon.  I really appreciate an audiologist like that, well anyone in any line of work really, who goes out of their way to help.  And does actually help.

It was when lovely audiologist was helping that we found out that my audiology log book (I had even gone to the effort of locating it just to placate Main Desk) was not correct.  No, the evil audiologist with whom I have been at loggerheads for over twenty years had written down the wrong size domes.  (Domes are the little nozzle-y bit at the end of the tube which plug into your ear).  Nice, helpful.  Lovely audiologist took black pen to my book and corrected the entry.

As I was now talking to lovely audiologist (who actually wears the same model hearing aid as me, audiologists tend not to have any personal or family experience with Hearing Loss), I asked a wee question that had been bothering me.  When I go to use the T-loop setting on my ears it’s really hard work to find it, sometimes I end up convinced that I have five different settings not three.  And of course the time I spend faffing trying to find the setting means time that I’m not hearing what’s going on and I had got thoroughly cheesed off by the new improved ears.

She asked me what I was doing.  I explained that evil audiologist had told me to press the middle of the rocker switch hard to move between settings.  She looked surprised.  I said that evil audiologist had sworn that this was the best way of doing things.  She told me that was not the case.  Just as I use the rocker switch to raise or lower the volume (I struggle with hyperacusis with my ME so I tend to use a lower volume than I technically should) so I should be using it to move between the settings but just pressing and holding instead.  This is a much more efficient and accurate system to switching between settings (when you hit the middle, you have a 50/50 chance of either going up or down which is why I was getting so many different options, not just moving up as indicated by evil audiologist) and even more impressive, is that I can go back down.  My old ear couldn’t go down, it just cycled from 1-2-3-1 but now I can go from 3 (T-loop) to either 2 (forward mic only, it’s great for places with lots of background noise) or to 1 (normal).  Just like that.  I like that.

I then asked how I was meant to obtain the relevant parts as evil audiologist had sworn that Main Desk was the way.  She looked surprised again.  Then checked with various other department members to make sure that she wasn’t cracking up.  Collection from Main Desk was never an option.  But in the future if I email audiology to let them know what I need they can leave a marked envelope at Main Desk if that’s easier.

Evil audiologist strikes again.  Do not trust her.

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UPDATE (17/04/12):  I have added a couple of diagrams of hearing aids to clarify the vocabulary used throughout, I couldn’t do it before as I didn’t have a right click working on my mouse!

New Ears!

Yes, that’s right, I’ve had another trip to audiology.

The biggest change is that I’ve now been fitted with two hearing aids, one on each ear funny enough.  This time I had one of the old (not in age) audiologists who would never fit me when I was a child or teenager.  Thanks a bunch honey.  (But no grudges held, of course!)

I probably drive people mad because I don’t just like things to work but I have to know how things work, the whys of things.  I like to have my eyes on people’s computer screens and watch the little charts go up and down and ask why these things are being done and how it all works.  I’m always the customer or patient who asks questions.  Maybe some people call it curiosity although I don’t think you can really push it as far out as nosiness.  Personally, I just see it as a quest for knowledge.  I like knowing things.

The new technology is mind-boggling, each hearing aid has to be customised to each ear’s hearing loss.  As I now have two ears to be tuned and because I have an especially unusual hearing loss pattern on my right ear (naturally!), it took an hour and a half to tune and fit my new ears.  I did apologise.

It was also starting to get a little bit boring because quite early on I could hear an awful lot more than I normally can.  I’m quite happy with any improvement because I have a tendency to believe that it’s necessary and normal to struggle in life.  I’m used to not hearing things and it’s only everyone else who, for some reason, feels that this is a problem.  The problem too is that you get used to a fairly quiet world and noise starts hurting.  I have sensitive little ears!

Now I have a marked improvement, I don’t think I was getting any low tones at all, and the world has become a noisier, busier place.  There’s traffic all over the place now.  Fortunately I’ve got volume control so I can turn it down a bit until I adjust.  Which is probably going to take a while.

Because of this big drop in hearing I’ve had to have entirely new models, I didn’t realise that each model covered slightly different ranges although I guess it kind of makes sense somehow.  Instead of clinical brown (presumably this brown-beige shade was chosen for its compatibility with an average skin tone, which therefore means it’ll be too dark or too light for everyone other than a resuscitation dummy), I got to choose colours.

I’m not good with choices.  I get overwhelmed easily.  And choosing hearing aid colours is pretty much like choosing glasses frames, it sounds a deceptively simple, easy decision but there are an awful lot of things to be taken into account and then you’re going to have to live with it for yonks to come.

There were quite a few cool colours, a nice primary red, a funky purple, a beautiful pearl pink, I like colours.  But you also have to balance practicality.  For example, I can guarantee that if I chose a red hearing aid then I would only ever wear pink and vice versa.  (I guess this where having a work uniform comes in handy).  Then there’s the fact that I usually wear my hair back so any really strong colours would stand out.  I actually like to be quite discreet about such things (in fact, I’m amazed at how many people don’t actually realise I wear an ear at all, it’s quite scary especially when you think about the size of the old mould), nothing too flashy (don’t get me started on white trainers, they actually freak me out when I wear them).  Plus of course I had to choose two colours, one for each ear so I don’t get confused.  (Who, me, confused?!)  So this meant that I had to select two colours that also went together, it just wouldn’t be right wearing a pink hearing aid with a red one, would it?!  It was so difficult.

Anyway, I finally settled on something comparatively plain and simple.  Two different greys that I can wear with anything and won’t feel conscious about having on my ear.  Meet my new ears:

Although the world is now a very noisy place, I’m looking forward to being back on ‘radar’ duty and being able to pick up other people’s conversations from afar (hmm, that might be nosiness!).  Oh and trying a local T loop again, it’s been really quiet for months and boy have I complained!  But now I’ve got a sneaky suspicion that the volume might just have improved so there might be humble pie for dinner!

Oh and don’t tell the husband, but the audiologist reckons that I should wear them inside too not just when I’m out and about.  Ssssh.

A Trip to Audiology

OK, don’t fret, I’m not going to bore you all with a drivel of the same old repeated excuses but going to jump straight in …

It’s an absolute scorcher today, proper summer weather with sunshine, blue skies and that lovely gentle breeze which makes it all bearable.  A little crazy given that we seem to be into autumn properly now and only a few weeks ago, at the beginning of the month, we were being threatened with frost, ice and even snow by the creative geniuses that are weatherfolk.  We haven’t had too many days like this during the summer but it hasn’t been as bad as everyone would like to make out, just we’ve had loads of horrible humidity and grey skies.  Blerk.  Summer is a highly unreliable season.  It holds too many promises, or people tend to ascribe them to that particular time of the year anyhow.  Then naturally they get let down.

I’ve got a rotten cold (I can whinge about that at length some other time) and besides which I’m absolutely knackered at the moment so my husband insisted that I take the bus to the hospital.  Which in my very humble opinion is a complete waste of money.  Life is supposed to kill you, or at least make you more worn out.  He won.  So I arrived in audiology looking fairly presentable and still (mostly) breathing.  A bonus that I was secretly grateful for.

I broke my mould a little while ago.  Well I didn’t, it did.  It just broke.  I went to put it in and it had this massive crack in it which quickly became a massive split.  I didn’t even know it was possible for them to break; they’re not exactly delicate are they?!  Oh, if you’re not au fait with hearing aids, the mould is the pluggish ear shaped bit that sits in your ear lobe.  Have you ever heard of one breaking?  Apparently they can.

They, that is the very nice lady audiologist (I qualify this because the audiologists in my life are usually wretchedly mean), decided to fit me with one of those new fangled mould-less pipes which are supposedly more comfortable and discreet.  Fair enough.  The problem with that is they now have to adjust the settings for this new system.  It kind of sounds like I’m at the swimming pool when I first turn it on.  A slightly warm, bubbly, echoey distort.

Which is why I was trotting (or getting the bus) down to the hospital today.  To have my settings reconfigured.  Coo, I wish they could do that as easily for the rest of me!

Today I had another very nice lady audiologist (I know, two in a row, it’s unheard of!  I did get a little concerned when a very grumpy looking man audiologist stepped out of one of the offices but fortunately he was looking for someone surnamed ‘Tinker’; isn’t that a great surname?).  We had the same name (mine is a very rare name) too, me and the nice lady audiologist that is.  She decided that rather than reconfiguring my settings straightaway she’d give me a hearing test first.  Which is where it kind of got all interesting.

She was going to just test my right ear because that’s one I wear an aid in but I explained that although the powers-that-be have fitted it to the right side, it’s actually my left one which has the problems.  So we tested both.  I thought I was doing pretty well as I was hitting the button far too much to convince anyone that I have hearing loss.  (Audiologists never believe I can’t hear for some reason, it’s been a long running battle since probably before I started school.  I got my first hearing aid when I was twenty-one.)  When I have a cold or something then I tend to be far more sensitive to noise then I am usually.  There is also quite a difference between hearing a noise (the hearing test is composed of a mixture of hideous ear piercing shrills, beeps and tones akin to telephone ring and dialling tones) and understanding sound (ie conversation).

Then she fitted some kind of contraption which seems to have been invented by a dentist as it pulverised my skull into a very strange angle and left my forehead very sore.  (I’ll share my thoughts on dentists another day, I’ve recently been at war.)  I’ve never had that done before.  Then after that, we had something which I promptly christened the ‘train test’.  They send a hideous ‘rushing’ noise, which I can’t actually make up my mind if it’s the sound of a train rushing by or the sound that you’d hear if you ill advisedly decided to stick your head out the window of a high-speed train, into one ear whilst trying to get to you to hear some faint beepy noises in the other.  Didn’t like that.

Then she showed me the results.  First of all, I found out that I haven’t had a hearing test since 2007.  Unlike eyes and glasses, which you feel duty bound to check every so often and kind of expect to deteriorate, I don’t really think to have my hearing checked.  I’m supposed to be recalled every five years anyway, apparently.  I don’t expect it to go downhill, hearing is a static thing, surely?

My husband has been asking me if I’ve got my hearing aid turned on quite a lot lately.  I blamed his grumpiness.  (He’s used to me not paying any attention at home because I never wear it then, only when I go out).  “Turn it on!”  “But it is!”  I usually have to prove it.  But you know, my hearing’s fine.

Apparently on one of these graphs (told you she was a nice audiologist, she actually explained the results, I’ve never had that happen) normal hearing should be below 20 (which is the top of the graph, bizarrely).  My average on the right WAS about 30.  That was in 2007.  I’m now above 40.  On both ears.  And there’s big chunks (the ‘low’ tones which I’ve always told them that I’ve had trouble with, well in real life what are you most likely to hear anyway?  The fire alarm or a conversation?  Completely different pitches, irrespective of volume.) which are quite a bit more below that.

Oooh.

The result is that I’m going to have to be fitted for (funky) new hearing aids because my current model doesn’t cover my hearing loss.  And when I say hearing aids, I mean two, one for each ear.  (I keep typing year not ear, I don’t know what that says about my hearing, brain or cold.)  So I’m going back to audiology again.

The worst of it is that at some point I’m going to have to let my husband know.  You know, the whole thing about me not being able to hear EVEN when I’m plugged in.  I’ve got a nasty feeling that this is going to involve the ‘told you so’ phrase.  Hmmm.