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Do you have anything to say? Oh, you didn't understand? Let me say it again:
What would life be like if you could only understand 20 percent of the words that were spoken to you, and even fewer than that if there was any kind of noise in the background?
Do you have anything to say? Oh, you didn't understand? Let me say it again:
What would life be like if you could only understand 20 percent of the words that were spoken to you, and even fewer than that if there was any kind of noise in the background?
Many people can only start to imagine living life like that. Others, myself included, have lived that experience. You rely on lipreading. Phone conversations become difficult or impossible. You feel isolated from the world, from your own family. When I started the whole process to get a Cochlear Implant, I did a standard test that is used to determine eligibility for the CI. I sat inside a testing booth that was perfectly quiet. I was wearing my hearing aid. The audiologist adjusted the volume on the speakers in the testing booth so that it was loud enough for me. Basically, I was in the "perfect" listening environment - no noise, no distractions, and things were loud enough. I then listened to a recording (so that I couldn't read any lips) of people speaking sentences, and I repeated back what I understood, even if it was only a word.
At that first test, my audiologist did the test twice, each time with a different set of sentences. My scores were 21% and 25%. That means that, even in the best of circumstances, I could "hear" only 1 word in 5 (that's 20%). Put another way, I was missing 80% of spoken words in the best possible case. If there was noise or other conversations going on at the same time, it went down from there. I remember that, at the time, I was stunned by how low those numbers were. I was surviving basically by reading lips and (on the phone/TV) subtitles. That test was almost exactly 4 months ago today.
At that first test, my audiologist did the test twice, each time with a different set of sentences. My scores were 21% and 25%. That means that, even in the best of circumstances, I could "hear" only 1 word in 5 (that's 20%). Put another way, I was missing 80% of spoken words in the best possible case. If there was noise or other conversations going on at the same time, it went down from there. I remember that, at the time, I was stunned by how low those numbers were. I was surviving basically by reading lips and (on the phone/TV) subtitles. That test was almost exactly 4 months ago today.
Fast forward to yesterday, which was my second "re-mapping" appointment since the initial activation of the CI last month. The remapping itself was pretty non-eventful. We did the test to determine the softest sounds I could hear (aka "count the beeps") and the loudest comfortable sounds (aka "tell me just before it's too loud to be uncomfortable"). While Dr. G updated the programming in the speech processor, she told me, "OK, we're going to turn it on, and when we do, we're going to be quiet" (I can read lips, so I knew what she said). When she turned it on, I could hear voices. I looked around the small office (the door was closed). I looked at the computer to see if she was playing a video or something. I didn't see where the sound was coming from, so I said "I hear some people talking." "Yes," she said, "there's a whole conversation going on outside, down the hall." I couldn't believe my ears...
Next, we went into the testing booth to repeat the same test that I had done before getting the CI (with different sentences, of course). As she started the test, I was stunned at how clear the voices sounded. After about, I dunno, 20 or so sentences, she had me wait while she calculated the results. She then said, "let's do another." Now, instead of doing this one in quiet, Dr. G turned on some background noise called "speech babble." It wasn't anyone actually talking, but it sounded like a crowd of people were talking/babbling away. We went through the test with that speech babble playing in the background. As soon as I heard the babbling, I was expecting to do poorly, as speech-in-noise is an area where I always did poorly in the past.
After that test was done, I waited while Dr. G crunched the results. We went back to her office, where Josephine was waiting patiently. When we got back, Dr. G stepped out for a second, and Josephine asked me how it went. I said, "good, I think - let's see what she says." Dr. G came back and said, "on the first test, you scored 94%, and on the noise test, 64%.. You are hearing better than some people with 'normal' hearing." I literally couldn't speak, I was so choked up. Josephine gave me a kiss and said, "congratulations." I heard that one hundred percent.
Welcome, me, to the other 80%. God is good!