Before my right ear was implanted a few months ago, both the doctor and the audiologist said that once I was bilateral, my right ear would very likely become my better one again, since it had been for 18 years before the left side was implanted. So after my last mapping, when I noticed that the volume on the right side has been higher than on the left, I attributed it to that, or to the fact that the right implant is still new and the mapping needs to be refined. I definitely notice that if I take off one processor or the other, I struggle to understand more if I’m just using the left one than with just the right one.

At my latest mapping the other day, I told the audiologist about the volume difference and she started to make adjustments. The typical procedure during a mapping is for the audiologist to use software to play a series of beeps in different pitches, each one stimulating a single electrode in the implant. As the beeps play, I tell her whether the volume is at a comfortable level, or whether it’s too soft or too loud. The levels on my left side have been basically stable for most of the last 2 years, so this test has generally gone pretty fast at previous mappings.

During this last mapping, however, the beeps on the left, at levels that hadn’t been changed in at least a year and a half, now sounded very, very faint; some of them I couldn’t even hear at all without a large increase in volume. It seemed strange to me that a second implant on the other side would be responsible for this, and so I suddenly wondered: could my left implant be starting to fail?

Towards the end of 2019, AB announced that there was a problem with recent implants from fluid getting into the sensitive internals. They immediately pulled existing products so no more of them would be used, and alerted those who already had them; I was one of the people who received the letter indicating that my implant was one of the ones that had the problem. The failure rate seemed to be fairly low, so they were not going to advise removing and replacing implants unless they started to fail. So all I could really do was hope it wouldn’t affect me. (My second implant is a newer model which hopefully should be okay.)

Anyway, according to the audiologist, the way to check for this type of failure is an impedance test, which she does at every mapping regardless. Apparently the impedance in my left implant is lower than it was last time, but not low enough to confirm that it is actually failing. So she said she would share the data with AB and see what they say. I am still waiting to hear back. She said that even if it is failing, there are ways to program around it, so we’re definitely not at the point that I need more surgery.

In other news, a few weeks ago we went to Cedar Point, then last weekend we went to Kings Dominion. At Cedar Point, I took off my processors to go on the roller coasters, because I didn’t want to risk losing them. However, since I really can’t hear at all without them, it felt like I was all alone on the rides, reinforcing the fact that deafness can be very isolating. So when I went to Kings Dominion, I tried using Ear Gear to secure my processors. They have covers with a loop for your eyeglasses arm to go through, and I modified them slightly using jump rings to make the loops a bit longer, because the positioning of these loops wasn’t really where my glasses are — it’s on top of the cover while my glasses are behind it. Here’s the modification I made — two aluminum jump rings and two rubber rings through those, which my glasses arm goes through:

This worked better, but turned out not to be a viable solution for roller coasters: the motion still made them come off my ears, although they didn’t go anywhere because the Ear Gear was pretty secure. Still, the goal was to be able to hear while riding, and they didn’t work for that. Plus, I spent the whole ride worrying about losing them, which didn’t make for a lot of fun. I think I will need to just suck it up and get the waterproof case, which would allow me to keep the processors off my ears and stick them in a pocket or something.

A few weeks ago I had a hearing test to see if I had retained any residual hearing after my second surgery. And the answer is: almost none. I heard about 3 of the beeps, but only at the very loudest volume. Considering that I had just been to an amusement park where I heard absolutely nothing without my processors on (despite the fact that parks are noisy places), this was not a surprise. I had hoped to retain some hearing, but I knew it might not happen so I had to make peace with this before getting the second implant.

So now I just wait to see what AB says about my left implant…