Earmolds

The earmold I got back in Feb/March.... welllllll it split wide open right at the hole where the tubing goes into the earmold. Oh great. So I made an appointment to have a new earmold impression made, and wore an old earmold that must've been around 5 years old. It was pretty hard too, but I didn't experience feedbacking from the hearing aid with it. Got the earmold impression made...

Week and half later, the audiologist's assistant called and left me a message, saying to call her back. I tried to call back several times with the i711 Relay service, but got a "line is busy" response every time. What?! I was able to get through a couple days later. Yep, earmold is ready, so stop by Friday or Monday and she'll fit it. Of course, I couldn't go last Friday, as my car door wouldn't stay shut. By yesterday though, door was staying shut, my battery had been charged up and I could get my car running again, so I ran over to the audie's office to get the earmold. Yay! This time it's a Westone earmold, not Unitron.

From there, I went to work and switched back to the old earmold, as the new one was already hurting the top of my ear in the crook. I forgot to mention to the assistant to leave the top part off the earmold when the impression was made. But I remembered I had a Dremel tool at home, so when I got home yesterday evening, I used the Dremel and filed the top of the earmold down a bit. Now it fits better in my ear, doesn't hurt. I'm very happy now. I've used nail files in the past to file down the top of the earmold, but the Dremel tool is so much more quicker! I originally got the Dremel tool to use to file down my dog's claws, but he absolutely refuses to let me get near him with the Dremel, so it's been sitting around collecting dust for several months. Was glad to finally get an actual use out of the Dremel.

iCom and telecoil

Got to play with telecoil over the weekend. Works great! And there is far less buzzing/electrical interference with telecoil on while I'm near a computer. I pretty much have to put my ear right next to the computer to even hear the buzzing, so that's a big improvement from the Supero.

Tried out the iCom tonight for the first time. It works well for listening to music on the ipod or computer. But will I actually get one for myself? I have no idea. It's an accessory, Medicaid wouldn't cover it, so I'd have to come up with about $300 for the iCom. I'll keep trying it out, but so far I'm thinking I'll just stick with Telecoil, since I already have the MusicLink, and I also still have my neckloop for backup (for use on the computer, the plug-in jack is different on the neckloop so it won't plug into my ipod).

I have noticed that I do have to turn up the volume on the computer or ipod more with the icom. With tcoil, the volume setting is pretty low and I can hear the music just fine, lower than with the Supero.

Naida/Supero, captions

Had an audiology appointment today at 11:30. Audie fitted the new earmold for my left ear, attached it to my Supero hearing aid, and hey no feedback! Awesome. But it sure feels odd to have a hearing aid in the left ear. It's been so long, it just feels weird. And I can feel the earmold vibrating in my ear too. I had to turn the volume down on the Supero to reduce the earmold vibrating. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be hearing anything with the left ear, but we want to keep the auditory nerve simulated.

Also made a few adjustments to the Naida. Brought up the level on the SoundRelax feature to moderate (was on low before), so will see how that works now. Also put in a program for Speech in Noise, and modified it so the background noise would be reduced so I could hear speech in front of me (I asked about ZoomControl, and she had to call Phonak. Turns out one would need 2 Naida IXs for the ZoomControl feature, but she was able to modify the Speech in Noise so it'd be similar to the ZoomControl). Also had her turn on Telecoil on the hearing aid too, so when I get home I'll experiment with the MusicLink from TecEar and the ipod. She took the EasyPhone programming off, since I don't even use a phone, and put Telecoil in the EasyPhone spot, to see if putting the MusicLink to my ear will cause my hearing aid to switch to the Tcoil automatically. If not, no big deal.

She also loaned me the iCom to try out, as well. I'll definitely be doing some "experimenting" over the next 3 weeks with the Telecoil and iCom functions, and see which works best for me.

I'm quite happy with the Naida IX. Definitely a much better progress this time of adapting to it. No glitches or any of the problems like I experienced the V 2 years ago. I still continue to pick up on more sounds here and there.


Also, in the last few weeks, I've emailed the CW station about the lack of captions on their channel on my TV. I wasn't sure if it was the local CW channel doing that, or if it was a problem with the cable or what was going on. After chatting with Bresnan cable, I was able to turn on the Subtitles option on the cable box. But that still didn't do anything. CW channel was still captionless. So I asked some of my friends on Facebook if they got captions or not. One said no, and another said yes. I had the 2nd friend send me pictures of her cable box, to see if it was different. Indeed, she had a different box, the newer Pace box. After relay-calling Bresnan, they sent a tech guy out. I mentioned that my friend had the Pace box and got the captions, and he said he noticed that difference too. The older Motorola box just doesn't pick up the captions for the CW channel for some reason (which is odd, since the captions work fine on most other channels). But he took the old Motorola box out, and hooked up the new Pace box, and now the captions work great! Awesome. Now I should be able to enjoy watching Supernatural and Smallville once again. Of course, I need to get caught up, which I'll do at some point. I'm just happy to finally have captions for the CW channel again.

Naida IX UP

Got the nice new RED Naida IX. so far not bad. Just very basic right now. Have another appointment for Sept. 16. Audie doesn't think Medicaid will cover icom but she'll call Phonak and find out. Will have to try the hearing aid in different situations and figure out what adjustments need to be made. Also new earmold impression made for the left ear, 3/4 shell (half shell wasn't good enough, Supero hearing aid feedbacks like CRAZY). Audie is also going to get a NoahPro set up on her computer so she can adjust the Supero and reduce feedback on it.

Been hearing random things when I got back to my apartment. My dog had 2 tags on his collar (1 for rabies vaccination, the other is ID tag), but I had to take the ID tag off so the tags wouldn't "clink" (I need to get him a new ID tag with updated info anyway). I heard the clinking with the Supero, but it wasn't too bad. But now, whoa buddy he's so NOISY! I'm about ready to take all the squeakers out of his toys too! And I've kept hearing this buzzing going on, I think it was coming from outside. Not sure what it was... maybe traffic? or lawn mowing (although the lawn mowing was done yesterday) or plane? I have no idea. I think it's cars passing by.

MusicLink issues

And already I've got issues with the TecEar NoizFree music link. Great. I think the wiring connection has gotten a bit loose. I have to play with the cord a bit to get the best results for listening to music, but I move in the slightest bit, the connection disappears. Definitely not too happy with this right now. I'll have to speak with my audie on Tuesday and see if there's something else I could use to listen to music on my ipod. I don't want to have to keep buying the Hatis Epic or the TecEar NoizFree every time the old one breaks. Seems like no matter what I do, I'm somehow rough with both device (although the Hatis Epic will last me about a year so I get a longer use out of it).

I have used Phonak's FM unit in the past for listening to music, but I quit using it when the FM transmitter kept breaking so often (I got this transmitter back in Jan. 2001 when I got the Claro hearing aid). It's an older transmitter, one which Phonak doesn't make/sell anymore. And buying a whole new unit would just cost more money that I don't have. Maybe I could try using DAI or something. I don't know, but I'll have to discuss this with the audie and see if we can figure something out. Or maybe the icom? I don't even know.

Word of Hope Deaf School

I haven't had much luck with my Hearing Aids for Africa project. But that's ok, I tried. And I'm still trying. But I also learned that the African Hope Initiative is trying to raise $40,000 by October. That money will be used to purchase hearing aids and provide education for the deaf kids in Burkina Faso. The African Hope Initiative will be flying out to Burkina in November to provide the hearing aids and funds.

You can donate money directly to:
African Hope Initiative
P.O. Box 631324
Littleton, CO 80163-1324

or online at http://africanhopeinitiative.org/contribute/

For more info, check out this blog entry.

Also, here's a video about the Word of Hope Deaf School.

Today's Appointment

Today I got to meet the new audiologist at the office, since the previous one left to help a relative out for a while. Don't know how long he'll be out, but I was really pleased with the new audie. She's extremely nice, has a husband that wears hearing aids, yeah. She read some of the notes in my file and noticed that I was working on getting a cochlear implant. When she saw that, she got on me for not having a hearing aid on in the left ear for stimulation purposes. She made an earmold impression of the left ear so I can get a mold and start using my analog again later on. We also discussed different power hearing aids, and she's placed an order for a Phonak Naida IX UP, red transparency. Oooo. She tried to hook up my Supero to the computer to make adjustments to it, but alas, she doesn't have the cable cord so the adjustment didn't happen. But overall, I was really pleased with today's appointment! I think I'll be happy with her. Have an appointment for ... I think it was Aug. 24... erm, I have the appointment card at home on my fridge. Since she's the only audie in the whole office, and she's taking on the previous audie's clients, she's rather busy these days, but what else can I do? Last I checked, there weren't any other local audiologists that accept Medicaid.

It seemed like she was familiar enough with how Phonak's newer hearing aids function, and of how to program them... I brought up that I had tried the Naida V a couple years back and that it was so full of problems I wasn't happy then. She said part of it was probably because of the compression feature. Hm!