MAPping today!

Had a MAPping appointment with the audie from Denver today. She makes 2 trips up to Wyoming each year to do MAPping appointments with her Wyoming clients, once in the spring, and again in the fall. It's really great she does this.

My grandparents drove down as they were curious about the process. They arrived at my apartment and we hung out for a bit, chatting and playing with my crazy dog. Then we took off for the Special Ed. Services building, as the CI audie likes to "take over" the school district audiologist's office and sound booth. My appointment was at noon. My mom, sister and nephew were already there just hanging out. My sister was curious of the process too, and mom pretty much kept the nephew busy during my appointment.

Got into the office and sat in a chair. Allison swapped out laptops (the client she saw right before me has a Cochlear device). She now has to bring two laptops, one for Cochlear users, and the other for AB users. She got my Harmony hooked up, but the computer wasn't picking up on it at first so she had to make a phone call. But soon enough the laptop was reading my processor, yay! She was a bit nervous as she had a client coming from another town who is also an AB user as well. She brought up the high frequencies a bit, in hopes I would be able to pick up on the 'S' and 'SH' sounds better, and loaded up ClearVoice! My old Program 3 is now Program 1 (I was on Program 3 for about a week), Program 2 is similar to 1 but with the bumped up higher frequencies and CV Medium. Program 3 is higher volume of Program 2.  And on the Neptune, we decided to add 3 more programs to it (same as 2/3 on the Harmony, but with even more volume). She says maybe by May or June, I will probably have to send her a processor so she can add more volume or whichever and send it back to me, then I'd see her again July 13th.  I also gave her a copy of the DVD of my implant activation, and she asked for my permission to use it with other clients or something. I told her go for it, use it for whatever! Gave a copy to my grandparents as well.

Allison also tested me real quick in the sound booth. Just playing the tones and seeing if I could pick up on them. I was getting up to 50-75 dB range, but nowhere near 25 like she was hoping, but it's still early yet. Says to take it easy with the auditory training, to not rush into it or train too hard. Oh no problem there. I haven't even been doing the Listening Room CLIX traning on a daily basis. Maybe every other day or so. It depends on how I'm feeling by the time I get home in the late afternoon (if I'm really tired or not).  Also did a quick test of 'baseball' or 'airplane' first, then eventually 'baseball' and 'toothbrush'. Ok, toothbrush and baseball is still reallllllly tricky to figure out, but I already knew that just from the Clix practice, getting words mixed up on that too. I'll get it eventually, will just gave to keep working at it and letting the brain figure everything out.

Then I was done! We left and headed to the ihop for lunch. I realized I was hearing the air conditioning going in the car, so I turned off my hearing aid, pulled the headpiece off then put it back on. I heard the AC, then it tuned out! Kind of cool. I did start getting a bit of a headache on the left side of my head during lunch, so I turned down the volume.After lunch, grandparents dropped me off at home so I could get going to work. Drove to work with my windows rolled down for a short while, didn't hear the windy sounds. And at work, I don't have to listen to the AC going. Before, without clearvoice, the AC was like a "whrrrrrrrrrrrrl" going on in my head, but now, nada. CV is quite neat! Have since been very slowly turning up the volume a bit to see how I'm tolerating Program 2. Am to keep an eye on any face twitching going on too, as sometimes the stimulations from the implant's electrode can sometimes cause the facial nerve to twitch/react, which hasn't happened yet.