Another Cochlear Miracle

Cliff got his second cochlear implant May 27.  He hasn't really felt as though it helped him much, and thought he'd made a mistake getting it... until yesterday.

There are a lot of appointments involved after you get these implants.  Most of them are not with the surgeon, but with an audiologist.  They do all sorts of things at different visits that involve testing and "tuning up" the implant.  Yesterday's tuneup took away all my husbands doubts about having the second implant.

He had been told at his previous appointment to go home and listen to tv with the left-ear implant sometimes, without the right one being turned on.  He tried it once and couldn't make anything out, so that was that.  Yesterday he told the audiologist about it, and she said, "But you are supposed to practice listening to different things; that's how it works to make you understand things better."  

She put him through several tests that involve a computer being hooked up to his processor, told him to let her know which sound was louder or softer, and then changed things on the computer.  She did this several times.  Cliff mentioned to her that when I'm washing pots and pans at the sink, it sounds horribly loud to him.  She changed something on the computer that she thought would help that, and sure enough:  at home later I was washing dishes, and he said it wasn't a problem at all.

When that lady was done, Cliff could actually hear with the left ear, even with the the right ear turned off!  At home he found out he could hear the foil being unwrapped off my Lindor chocolates; I guess I'll have to go outside to sneak candy now.  He went to the shop, listened to his country music on Willie's Place, and found it sounding much better.

There is one negative thing that happened with the last implant.  About a week after he got that surgery, he started having severe vertigo.  It was so bad that the grandson got him to the hospital.  They gave him a pill that immediately helped the dizziness and sent him home with a prescription for 20 more pills, but he has taken most of them because he keeps getting dizzy; in fact, he's a little bit dizzy all the time.  So he's been carrying them with him every time we go someplace, just in case.  

Yesterday I told him we'd better take those pills with us to the appointment, because he doesn't have many left.  The audiologist looked at them and asked Cliff if he told the doctor he was having trouble with vertigo.  He hadn't.  That's sort of my fault, because I should have known that would be the right thing to do.  All I did was google it, which is never the right thing to do.  She said the pills he's been taking only mask the dizziness; the doctor can do things to help get rid of it, including therapy; she said she'd inform the doctor, and that he's have someone call and set up an appointment.  

So, I can now talk to my husband from another room, which I couldn't before; but I'm also going to have to be more careful when I try to sneak candy when he's around.

We're pretty excited about this new change.