Ever since I've gone bilateral, I've noticed I've had residual hearing in both ears. However, it wasn't at all what I was expecting. I felt like I could hear surprisingly soft (for my level of hearing loss, not actually soft) low pitched sounds in my right ear, and can actually sometimes tell if my dog is barking.
With my left (2nd ear) I've felt like I can hear higher pitched sounds, and some noises that I'd never been able to hear before I was implanted. One day after I got out of the shower, I was watching TV with my sister, sans implants. Every now and then, I would hear a faint 'click' in my left ear. I asked my sister if she knew what the noise was, and she shrugged. I tapped her the next time I heard it, and she had a look of awe on her face. She instructed me to look away, and turn back around every time I heard the noise. I did as she asked.
What was this noise?
The smacking of her gum. This was a total WTP (my version of WTF, except in my group of friends, we replace all cuss words with the word 'poo') moment. Gum smacking- how weird is that?!
The weirder thing is, CIs supposedly preserve low frequency hearing (if any). I wasn't sure if I was completely imagining things.
A few days ago, after much kissing up and begging, my wonderful dad bought me my very own iPod Touch. I was scrolling through and looking at different free Apps, and saw one called uHear. It uses 3 different tests to assess your hearing, for free, all on your handy dandy iPod. One of the tests measures hearing sensitivity.
I thought it would be cool to try out, since I was curious about my residual hearing, since I've never had it tested. I know it's not completely accurate, however the reviews were pretty good, so what harm could it do to try it out?
I'm not crazy :)
I depend on lipreading a lot myself and always wonder if other people can tell that I look at their lips rather than their eyes.
ReplyDeleteI hope everything is going ok with the whole 'deciding which way to go'.
Interesting post on the low tones. I have really good low tones, but it makes me crazy at night if anyone is walking around the house. Also when my son plays his music at night the base seems to vibrate through the heat ducts and keeps me awake. He claims he doesn't have it that loud and doesn't understand why I hear it.
ReplyDeleteIt's so weird how hearing works. I guess because your hearing is much better in the lower frequence than the highs, the lows are much more noticable. Does your son play an instrument, or is he playing music from speakers? I was reading an article in Hearing Health (from the Deafness Research Foundation) the other day, and it was listing the dB levels for various instruments. I was shocked that they were all at dangerously loud levels (as far as damaging hearing) I couldn't believe my violin could be as loud as 103 dB! Back when I wore hearing aids, my left ear had always been my better ear. When my hearing declined, my left ear (which is the side you hold the violin on) had declined significantly more than the right ear, so one can't help but wonder if that was part of the cause..
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