Part 5 - Dinah’s Cochlear Implant Journey

We’re following Dinah, one of my patients, in real time as she goes through the process of having a Cochlear Implant (CI). This should appeal patient and audiologists alike, as I tell both sides of the story.

Switch On

Dinah has had her implant switched on, and is only wearing the implant, no left supplementary hearing aid, until she has adjusted.

On Day One of sound, I met Dinah for coffee. She said it sounds:

"weird and robotic, like a Dalek. Earlier today it was just Dalek, this evening I'm getting some human inflection 'under' the robot voice".

Immediately on switching on, voices were indistinguishable, but later she could tell the difference between me and my husband.

The receiving unit, a small disc that sticks magnetically onto the skull, is on a little string, attached to a tiny hair clip. It fell out while we were talking! By Dinah’s reaction I could tell it was not the first time that day it had happened! 😂

Magnet strengths vary, apparently. The audiologist had tried two, but Dinah will need a stronger one fitting next week.

Hearing

Dinah can hear my dog panting on the nearby stairs. She can’t do that with hearing aids, because she doesn’t have enough dynamic range available to hear soft, loud and moderate sounds separately. This is a win for the implant!

Today, she is shouting. She can’t hear her own voice at the right volume, because they started the implant off quiet. It will build up over the next week. Meanwhile, I advised Dinah to put her hand on her chest while she speaks - you can learn to tell how loud you’re speaking by how much the chest vibrates.

Rehab

Dinah has been given lots and lots of booklets and rehab exercises. In 7 days she returns for the device to be set to full volume, she also has an app on her phone to manually increase the volume settings in stages herself.

The Listening For Life audiologists in Bradford have also connected her phone to the implant, so she can listen to music and YouTube etc through the implant.

Later that week

I checked in again with Dinah a few days later. Music was still sounding very weird indeed, but I could tell she was doing better with distinguishing words as we did her rehab exercises.

She’d also found courage to resume social activities and have conversations with strangers! Along with lipreading, she’s keeping up with conversations rather well. This is astonishing progress to me.

Coming up in Part 6 - Rehab and Full Volume

#dinahsjourney