Category Archives: Cochlear Implant

No. 2

February 9, 2011 By in Cochlear Implant, hearing loss Leave a comment

Gulp.

We are now underway. Alice went in to St. George’s last Friday for the first part of her assessment for her left-side implant. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the assessment process – for us at least – will be made up of three audiological assessments and that’s it! Friday was the first.

The downside – Alice had to have another ear-mould taken so she can wear a high-powered aid in her left ear for two weeks before her final assessment in a few weeks time. Essentially, the PCT won’t fund ear No. 2 if she hasn’t tried the aid first. Claire and I are quite anti this as some of you may remember from Alice’s first assessment. Because her hearing loss is so bad / unusual, the aids were cranked up pretty high last time. It really freaked Alice out and she refused to wear the aid (what’s the point of amplifying distortion?). In the weeks leading up to her getting her implant, we were terrified she wouldn’t wear the implant at all.

Sadly, we must try again, only with an even more powerful aid this time as her hearing loss seems even worse than before – nothing up to 110db. Oh well, it’s only for two weeks.

The scary thing is this means – technically – Alice could find out her date for surgery some time in the next month – end of April / early May seems reasonable………Gulp

On the positive side, we seem to be making some (slow) progress with Surrey CC on Alices statement. We went in last Monday to argue our corner and whilst they didn’t immediately buckle under my rantings and quotes from case -law, we have agreed a way forward. Worst case scenario we still have to go to tribunal, but I think we might be making some progress. It’s one of the plus-sides to Surrey not having provided Alice with any SLT for two years now (the post has been vacant for most of that time) – I believe the term is ‘not a leg to stand on’.

Here’s hoping

I can hear…..

April 4, 2009 By in ANSD, Auditory Neuropathy, auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder, Cochlear Implant, Uncategorized Leave a comment

In my eyes at least, it couldn’t have gone better. I’ll let you make your own minds up by watching the videos. They are about 10 minutes each. ‘Switch on’ essentially consists of two parts. Firstly, the Speech processor is connected to a computer which feeds sounds directly into Alice’s implant. We hear these as beeps on the video, Alice as who-knows-what. These beeps are slowly increased in intensity to the point at which Alice reacts. This is conducted across five of the 22 electrodes to get a conservative estimate of Alice’s comfort thresholds at each point in the spectrum. A ‘sweep’ is then conducted across all 22 electrodes, programming them to the same sort of levels before the microphone and Alice’s bionic ear are switched on fully.  The tests are completed in the usual testing suite, Alice has been taught to look at a speaker in the corner that lights up with a dancing Winnie the Pooh when she reacts to the sound.

At first the programme is very conservative and quiet. Over time, the thresholds will be increased allowing Alice to experience more and more sound.

The first video shows Alice reaching her threshold level with the first electrode – the moment we had all been waiting for:

The Second shows Alice’s full switch on – welcome to the world Alice:

A Small miracle, but a miracle nonetheless.