california

Ok... first an update on the week at school... Here is the deal with the f.m. So far, I am doing ok without it at the high school. I am sure I could benefit from it during class change discussions, but so far I have been able to use my office for that with the door closed and it works.
The jr. high... I probably need to exclusively use my f.m. there, but I turned it on the other day and it felt like my spectrum of sound went from being a rainbow to just being red and orange. It used to be the very opposite with my hearing aids... I felt like I couldn't hear until that f.m. was on and in my hand. Now, even though it will help with those sometimes soft speakers at the jr. high, it takes away wait feels like a lot of sound so I didn't have the patience to stick with it. I guess it is the first time in 3 years I feel like I am aware of my surroundings and I feel much more apart of the classroom. So, tomorrow will be "stick with it day" for me and I will work with changing my settings back and forth and using the f.m. exclusively at the jr. high.
I am also going to start trying to just use my implant only at home sometimes. I haven't really done that and I feel like I am not making the progress I want to make at the rate I want to make it. Don't wish me to relax any, it is this fiery attitude that has kept me going the past 3 years and we all know it!!!!

I did hear from the people in California and at the end of the month I am making a trip out there. I will be working for them the 24th and 25th. There are several particular testing areas the man mentioned, and I am really excited and hope that in the end... my listening and feedback can REALLY help. How many professionally trained musicians are struck with a sudden hearing loss in their prime? In my particular case the odds are 1 in 27 million. I think the odds are something like 1/10,000 in the world have sudden hearing loss every year... bilateral (both ears) is much more rare, and with an idiopathic diagnosis like I got... meaning the doctors not finding a disease or virus or tumor to account for my hearing loss, well... that leaves me in a very lonely place. My gut will always be that it was/is autoimmune inner ear disease. I didn't respond to the prednisone when I first went to the Cleveland Clinic or test positive for the antibody they were looking for, but by that time it was 6 weeks after my hearing nose dived.

The two relapses I had in the past six months, which is what caused me to look into an implant and the effectiveness of the steroids tells me it is autoimmune. When I really needed an answer as to why my hearing suddenly disappear I couldn't get a definitive one, and know I am quite sure that I have one, I feel no differently about it all. There was a time I would have given a king's ransom for it, and now I realize that having answers doesn't always settle things within your heart, sometimes all you need is time.

God Bless