Monday, January 12, 2004

hearing test for ssi

Went to Star Lane this morning.. Gave Mr. Vlastos a copy of the info I had found on how electrodes and channels for CIs work. He was HAPPY when I gave him the copy. Talked to Mrs. Hollis' group for a bit. Hollis found some info on the web involving the ear and yeah, and printed it out. Gave me a copy as I asked her I would like a copy and yeah. Explained to her of what I had learned of the connection of hearing sounds and the brain and of how later deafened people and deaf babies getting implanted early do better with the implants than those born and raised deaf as those born and raised deaf don't really make the connection as they have never heard sounds for so long and yeah.... errr.... Did I even make any sense?

Drove home, grabbed the note mom wrote. Drank a DP, had a couple of Reeses peanut butter hearts.... Went back to Star Lane. Checked emails, blah blah. I had transferred all of my printouts from over the year into a 2 inch binder as my 1 inch binder was just not gonna cut it! Jo arrived! we chatted a bit. went to good of the order, blah blah. Seniors went into Vlasto's room to discuss crap for tomorrow night's cosmo presentation. I'm not doing the presentation cause I didn't even do the 1st presentation as I was sick. I started writing out a very messy outline for my paper. I have waaaaaaaaaaay too much stuff and it's all disorganized. So I did an outline to help me out a bit so I wouldn't forget anything when I turned in the paper.
Then I left, met mom at the flower shop by 1. Mom was unpacking boxes of valentines day stuff for the shop. Soon enough we went to the clinic, mom filled out forms for me at the ear doctor office.
Forms are filled, we waited a few minutes. Then an audiologist comes to get me. We go into her lil office, talk a bit. Then I'm taken to the sound-booth. Frequency tests, speech discrimination tests, blah! I did okay on the speech discrimination tests according to the audiologist, and she couldn't understand why the results were so different from the ones on the 2 previous tests I had done over 2 years. Must be cause I've had my hearing aid readjusted several times and all... whatever! then mom and I go back to waiting area, wait a long time. Mom calls Riece and had her call the dentist office for mom. Mom had an appointment for 2:45 at the dentist, but the doctor visit took longer than expected. Then my name's called after... like 15-25 minutes of waiting? We're taken to another office/small room, whatever. We wait some more, ear dr comes in. He and Mom talked (I could BARELY hear the dude much less understand him!). Talked a bit of cochlear implants too.

With audiologist, she says she doesn't think a CI would be good for me.. I do too well with my hearing aid or whatever? I dunno.... don't really quite understand what she meant or whatever.
With the dr, just from looking at the audiogram, he said I would be a very good candidate. Then mom mentioned meningitis as cause of my deafness, then he said maybe not cause of ossification/scar tissue in the cochlea which is common after meningitis. Who knows! Only way to find out is by CT scan which is part of the evaluation process before the CI team decides if person is a candidate or not. yeah *shrugs*. But mom told me it sounds like he's gonna write a good letter for SSI and yeah.

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