What a day! I've been so busy recently with work, and had a hell of a long day. I was up late trying to finish fixing a laptop for work, then had to get up early to shower and go to audiology before work. My dad dropped me off as the appointment was 8.45 and the first bus leaves at 9.16, but it was before he went to work so I was there at 7.45.
So I'm sat in audiology, half asleep, with still-wet hair, lugging 2 laptops and my lunch (I use my mac at work- well, the boss and I split the cost, plus I had the other one I was trying to fix- so heavy!).
Several people look at me. Then at 8.15 the audiologist, Hayley (a very nice lady) walks in and says it'll take a while as the test is in the paediatric unit and they needed to set up- I said fine as I'm early but was dying for a glass of water!
So I lug all my stuff down there at 8.45. I explain that things like the phone ringing, cutlery clanking, some talking, sounds unbearably loud and harsh and uncomfortable- she says this is common and she agrees that it's probably recruitment.
For the test I had to sit under a microphone in an enclosed room with a perspex window. She said she would play sounds and I should tell her when I can hear them, and raise my hand when they get so loud that it's really uncomfortable and I want her to stop. She starts, and it goes 'beeepbloopbeep', increasing through frequency and volume- I nod after each one, but as usual they're at the same intervals so I know I couldn't hear some as there were gaps. I nod after each one, and pull faces when it gets loud. The low ones were loud but tolerable. The high ones were a lot quieter but very uncomfortable...she said I was just about tolerating the whole frequency.
As they got higher it caused interference, my hearing aids immediately went skreeeeeee and it was like a pneumatic drill inside my head, or fingernails down a chalkboard. She said I nearly fell off my chair!
We discovered that I am hearing aided - from my rough recollection as I couldn't have printouts (that old chestnut- I'm still waiting on my records...) at about 30, 20, 15, 20, 30, 60 across the frequencies (I think I've forgotten one but that's the gist, 4khz was 60). She said that 30 was acceptable for an adult. Unfortunately at 4khz my uncomfortable loudness level was 85 (and for some reason 65 was horrid and made me swear loudly) so there's not a lot of room to put sounds there. With the other freqs it was about 80-90db.
We were discussing this when her colleague Lucy came in, and asked if we were ok. Hayley said 'she knows things' and carried on talking about recruitment and compression. I felt quite happy that what I've learned is useful :-)
She turned down the gain a little (I assume) in the mids, so it was a little bit lower (I can't remember if the values before are before or after she did this) and we repeated the test. I got 5db or so more tolerance in the lows/mids. She explained that most useful speech information is in the middle, and high speech sounds are softer, plus I'd need them to be approx 60db to hear them, so I'm not getting much benefit in that area. She said that as I didn't wear analogues for a long time, my brain's used to things the way they are, and digitals are much more help with my type of loss but it's difficult to fit and this is the best they can do at the moment.
She suggested turning off the 4khz range completely to address the discomfort I'm having, but didn't want to make too many changes at once so I'll see how I feel with it as is for a while.
Today at tea time my mum sneezed- she has this unusual sneeze-cough sounding thing that always has 3 loud sounds and makes me cringe, but it was bearable. Things do seem a bit quieter and I had more trouble than usual following conversation at work, but the person I was talking to is very quiet, and I'm extremely tired.
I was surprised as I thought I'd be getting something like 20 in the lows, 0 in the mids (mine peaks up to 0-5 on my unaided headphone audiogram at 2khz naturally) and 40 at 4khz. I am hoping by the time my records come through these results will be on it cos the numbers are based on my terrible memory.
So I'm sat in audiology, half asleep, with still-wet hair, lugging 2 laptops and my lunch (I use my mac at work- well, the boss and I split the cost, plus I had the other one I was trying to fix- so heavy!).
Several people look at me. Then at 8.15 the audiologist, Hayley (a very nice lady) walks in and says it'll take a while as the test is in the paediatric unit and they needed to set up- I said fine as I'm early but was dying for a glass of water!
So I lug all my stuff down there at 8.45. I explain that things like the phone ringing, cutlery clanking, some talking, sounds unbearably loud and harsh and uncomfortable- she says this is common and she agrees that it's probably recruitment.
For the test I had to sit under a microphone in an enclosed room with a perspex window. She said she would play sounds and I should tell her when I can hear them, and raise my hand when they get so loud that it's really uncomfortable and I want her to stop. She starts, and it goes 'beeepbloopbeep', increasing through frequency and volume- I nod after each one, but as usual they're at the same intervals so I know I couldn't hear some as there were gaps. I nod after each one, and pull faces when it gets loud. The low ones were loud but tolerable. The high ones were a lot quieter but very uncomfortable...she said I was just about tolerating the whole frequency.
As they got higher it caused interference, my hearing aids immediately went skreeeeeee and it was like a pneumatic drill inside my head, or fingernails down a chalkboard. She said I nearly fell off my chair!
We discovered that I am hearing aided - from my rough recollection as I couldn't have printouts (that old chestnut- I'm still waiting on my records...) at about 30, 20, 15, 20, 30, 60 across the frequencies (I think I've forgotten one but that's the gist, 4khz was 60). She said that 30 was acceptable for an adult. Unfortunately at 4khz my uncomfortable loudness level was 85 (and for some reason 65 was horrid and made me swear loudly) so there's not a lot of room to put sounds there. With the other freqs it was about 80-90db.
We were discussing this when her colleague Lucy came in, and asked if we were ok. Hayley said 'she knows things' and carried on talking about recruitment and compression. I felt quite happy that what I've learned is useful :-)
She turned down the gain a little (I assume) in the mids, so it was a little bit lower (I can't remember if the values before are before or after she did this) and we repeated the test. I got 5db or so more tolerance in the lows/mids. She explained that most useful speech information is in the middle, and high speech sounds are softer, plus I'd need them to be approx 60db to hear them, so I'm not getting much benefit in that area. She said that as I didn't wear analogues for a long time, my brain's used to things the way they are, and digitals are much more help with my type of loss but it's difficult to fit and this is the best they can do at the moment.
She suggested turning off the 4khz range completely to address the discomfort I'm having, but didn't want to make too many changes at once so I'll see how I feel with it as is for a while.
Today at tea time my mum sneezed- she has this unusual sneeze-cough sounding thing that always has 3 loud sounds and makes me cringe, but it was bearable. Things do seem a bit quieter and I had more trouble than usual following conversation at work, but the person I was talking to is very quiet, and I'm extremely tired.
I was surprised as I thought I'd be getting something like 20 in the lows, 0 in the mids (mine peaks up to 0-5 on my unaided headphone audiogram at 2khz naturally) and 40 at 4khz. I am hoping by the time my records come through these results will be on it cos the numbers are based on my terrible memory.
