We went out early yesterday morning to collect my hearing aids. My team had arranged for me to collect them from the local hospital, which was great as it saved the usual long journey. I’d never been inside there before. It’s a tiny little hospital, about the same size as the Oncology Department that I usually go to.
I find the hearing aid technology fascinating. There were loads of things happening on a laptop, all these moving graphs and columns. My aids were plugged into another machine and then I had to sit there for about ten minutes with a little thin wire down my ears while they finalised the settings. The wire kept tickling. Eventually the moment I’d been waiting for arrived and the aids were put in my ears. I was astonished at how good the sound was. People had said to me don’t expect too much, it’s not the same as your normal hearing. But is sounded pretty good to me. They got my husband to speak to me from across the room and I could hear him perfectly. It was a wonderful feeling as I’ve not been able to hear for seven weeks.
Unfortunately I had to take the aids straight out again as I then had to learn how to put them in and out, do cleaning and maintenance and change the batteries. More difficult things to learn!
Eventually we were all done and we were soon back home. I don’t think I’d realised how much it had got me down not being able to hear and communicate with people. It was bliss to be able to listen to the radio. I rang my Mum and my Mum In Law for a chat, it was great to be able to use the phone again. Best of all I can communicate properly with my husband. We have got by with him either shouting a few words at me or by exchanging emails. I don’t think either of us had realised just how much time we used to spend just chatting about trivial things, or how much we were going to miss being able to do this.
I feel a bit like a kid let loose in a sweet shop now. I don’t know what to do first. There are friends and family to ring, hours of podcasts to catch up on and music to listen to. Last night we caught up on some TV programmes we had recorded that don’t have subtitles. I’ve not been impressed with the TV subtitling. I tried watching the News a couple of times but they seem to use a voice recognition system that comes up with all sorts of weird words. Then you get subtitles on programmes that miss out huge chunks of dialogue. That happened during a complicated murder drama and I hadn’t got a clue what was going on. First thing we watched last night was part 2 of a detective show. We watched part 1 a few weeks ago and the subtitles were perfect. For some reason they then put on part 2 without any subtitles at all!
I think the best thing about being able to hear again is that it has definitely improved my mood. I feel a lot better about things generally now. The last few weeks I didn’t like being in the house on my own. I felt quite isolated and vulnerable as I couldn’t use the phone or hear the doorbell. Now I’m looking forward to some time on my own so I can listen to my music and chat to friends. I also find it very reassuring that next time I have a bad day I can just pick up the phone to my Macmillan nurse.
