First Post

Sometimes I like to express my day and just talk so I decided to just blog all my thoughts, etc! I am Hard of Hearing and I don't mind it...I am still adjusting to it a bit as I have only been (as far as we know) hoh since I was 16/17.

So, here goes my first entry!

I was born hearing but since I was a baby I have always had problems with my ears. I had constant ear infections every month or so and sometimes in both ears! They decided to put tubes in, which lasted a bit, but not long enough. I ruptured my (right) ear drum 3 times. My mom talked to the pediatrician and was worried it would damage my hearing but they reassured her that nothing would come of it and I would be fine! Ya right. All throughout school every couple of years I would have my hearing checked (at school) with the 5 min hearing test (not in a sound proof booth) and I wouldn't have any trouble except for maybe 1 or 2 beeps. They never thought anything of it since it's possible that my ears could have been "plugged" or I was "stuffed up". I never had any real problems in school accept on report cards I always seemed to have "trouble" listening to the teacher and I talked too much lol. So, come and goes middle school and high school and suddenly my rents get divorced and I'm thrown back to canada (where I'm from-which isn't too bad). I turned 16 which was pretty monumental...i had a big party! :)

And then...it started!

I first started to notice a ringing in my ears. I would have a lot of trouble sleeping and it was quite annoying...and then it got louder! I went to one audi who said oh don't worry just deal with it...bye bye to him. Then I went to the children's hospital of eastern ontario (CHEO) and they were pretty nice, but they too said you should be fine, you have a slight hearing loss but nothing that needs to be worried about. Then my tinnitus got worse and i was referred to a tinnitus specialist at another hospital and she labeled my tinnitus as severe and suggested tinnitus maskers that stayed in my ears all day...umm hearing loss plus more noise in my ears..how am i supposed to hear? "OH YA!" she said. She was like well that could be a problem now could it. So I ditched her as well since she didn't tell me anything that I did not know already. I finally switched to another audi which usually deals with older ppl but the centre is really good and they have ALOT of experience dealing with the deaf/hoh. So, he finally said you seen to have a progressive loss but your left ear is not too bad and is not a cause of concern, but on the other hand your right ear has a loss b/w 40-50 dB across the board which would definitely be helped with amplification. So FINALLY someone who was thinking with their brain! So we looked and we picked the (back then) Phonak Una. Which I love (i will post pics) I have it in black and it seems to work fine, some days I do get frusterated and i just yank it out...but most it's great! I also have a smartlink SX fm system for school which is pretty handy in class as it's a big difference from high school to university. I have only gone two or three times for volume adjustments and lil tweaks of my ha but overall the ha has been great.
I think that is all for now! I will try to post more tomorrow! orr maybe later :)