Monday, 14 September 2009

Audiogram

deafdude asked what my audiogram looks like...so here it is! It took a while to get it into chart format as I only had numerical data. (many thanks to a computer geek for his help!). Although I was born deaf, quite a few years ago now, I DID previously have better hearing ..but the best was in around 75-90 dB loss until 1990. This level of loss didn't affect my achievements - I am a qualified Physiotherapist and have been a manager in the past - both of a Physiotherapy Department, and also the Scottish branch of a National Charity. However, I missed my contact with patients so went back to Physio at a lower grade - but with much more job satisfaction (even if no less stressful!)

This latest audiogram shows what my hearing has been like since I took that fateful plane journey in April this year. The red line is my right ear, the blue, my left ear.

I wear two digital hearing aids which help up to a point with my lipreading - my speech recognition with the hearing aids alone is 6%, but with both aids plus lip-reading this goes up to 54% accuracy. (lip-reading alone is 34% accuracy). I am hoping that the Cochlear Implant can improve on this. Even a little more hearing seems to improve my communication ability by a lot.

My brother is excited at the thought of a bionic sister - while someone else thinks its 'cool' to be able to directly plug an iPod 'into my head'!! I know that I will still be deaf as soon as the CI is disconnected but its also nice to get a bit of peace and quiet sometimes......
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5 comments:

  1. deafdude21 September 2009 at 11:05

    Thanks for sharing your audiogram! My hearing also used to be better above 500Hz. It was pretty much flat at 100db. Now it's at 120+ db! My low frequency hearing didn't get worse but all my highs are gone!

    Have you tried different HAs or more amplification? It let me hear more sounds/speech. You could be aided to 25-40db in the lows and mids with maximum amplification. My audiograms are here: http://deafdude1.blogspot.com/2009/08/all-my-audiograms-thus-far-with-my.html

    Do you have any other audiograms and do you or one of your friends have a scanner? We could learn alot from studying audiograms and me and my audiologist can give you tips how to hear better with HAs. :)

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  2. scotsfran23 September 2009 at 08:03

    The last time I was at the CI Unit - they retuned my hearing aids much better than before. It looks like I have an average 70dB loss up to 1.5K frequency with the hearing aids on(not much happening above that frequency). I can't tolerate much any more than that or it just makes me dizzy/increases the tinnitus. I have other audiograms but thought only the most recent would be relevant?

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  3. deafdude8 October 2009 at 22:07

    Perhaps you may want your HAs programmed not to amplify your cochlear dead regions? This is strange you can only accept a little gain that you are still deaf even aided!

    I looked at your audiogram again and it's possible your left ear might have no residual hearing. The responses could be vibrotactile in the lows and some pressure sensation in the mids/highs. I know that at 110db+ I can "feel" the sound pressing on my eardrum.

    You could get a CI in your bad left ear and try a HA programmed only to amplify 500Hz to 1000Hz in your right ear. Id try the HA in right ear before getting any CI first.

    The good thing is you don't really have any usable hearing in your left ear to risk losing after CI. I have usable hearing in both ears that id like to keep so im getting stem cells instead of CI.

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  4. scotsfran9 October 2009 at 04:16

    I have been having a dilemma which ear to have implanted. My Consultant would prefer to do my left ear as this is the one which had more hearing up until April 2009, but I always preferred hearing in my right ear when I had useful hearing in it in the past up until 1990. I always thought it would be the worse ear that would be implanted (which turns out to be my left ear now) in case it wasn't successful but the Consultant says the better ear gives better results. I'll need to dig out my audiograms from the past and especially pre-April 09.

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  5. deafdude14 October 2009 at 08:21

    Id try different, better HAs before deciding which ear to implant. Whichever ear hears less with HA can get CI. A CI usually destroys hearing so there's no "better" ear as itll be the same after CI. You could go bimodel with one CI and one HA, let the better ear benefit from HA. Visit your audiologist and let us know how different HAs work out.

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