I had a counselling session. The lady who came to see me was someone I knew from way back in the 1980’s when I first lost my hearing. She Helped me to learn to recognise what I was hearing then and she will be doing this again when I have had my implant. She also explained to me what the cochlear implant consisted of, what it looked like and where the various pieces would go. She had to tell me that there were risks but that they were slight. Once the implant is inserted there is a 4 to 6 week period where you don’t have any hearing in the implant ear. This is to give the implant and your head a chance to settle before the cochlear is switched on. Once the implant is switched on the hard work begins. You have to learn to recognise what you hear and to understand that you are hearing sounds that you probably haven’t heard for years. Quite a daunting thought. It is likely that you might find everything too noisy at first. Your implant is retuned to give you the maximum benefit but to enable you to hear comfortably. It can be tweaked later. After the explanations came another test. This was a word recognition test. It was very difficult and I couldn’t even make a guess at many of the words. She said we would do the test again when I have had my implant and compare the results? Food for thought! So all tests completed and now to wait for a date.
My insurance have repeated that they will not pay for this implant as my hearing loss is a chronic illness and as such is not covered under my plan!
Well if that’s the case I will just have to pay for it. This means so much to me – to be able to hear friends and family, especially my young grandchildren, would be so wonderful. We all have to make choices and I have always chosen to buy my hearing aids rather than a new car or other things. What will be the next event????