When I put my CIs on this morning, the volume seemed much louder and I had to turn them down. My hearing is much clearer today as my allergy symptoms also seem to be subsiding. I’m still taking medication and now maybe I can begin to ease off of it.

I don’t know exactly what I’m allergic to. The onset was late August and early September, when the change in the foliage kicks off. The leaves are all down now and we have been experiencing cooler weather, rain and snow.

Since the maps I currently have were done while I was experiencing allergic reactions, I may need to have them redone as my symptoms go away. I have noticed that the sound is not as good as it was before all of this started. It seems to have a bit of a reverberating affect, like you can get with a guitar string.

About ten days ago, my hearing changed. It sounded like Darth Vader was on my left shoulder and if I was somewhere with background noise, like a grocery store, it sounded like there was a train passing very near by. After posting what I was experiencing here on Hearing Journey, I took Kim and Evelyn’s advise and made an appointment with my audiologist which I had yesterday.

There is some history leading up to this change and it answers some questions about why this had not come up before. I got my second implant a year ago on 10/10/2007 and was hooked-up on 10/17/2007, so I have had regular mappings this past year. Also, last fall, I decided I wanted to make some healthy changes and getting off of the allergy medication that I was taking every day was one of them along with some dietary changes. I managed to stop taking Claritin every day and did not use allergy medication for the rest of the winter, spring and this recent summer. About two weeks ago, I began having allergy symptoms and I was in need of relief, so I started taking Claritin again to get through this season. About four days after I started taking the medication, my hearing changed dramatically to what I described above. I continued to take the Claritin and I saw Dr. Gifford yesterday. When I gave her my allergy history and the changes I was experiencing, she said that normally this would have confused her, but she had just come back from a seminar where this was one of the subjects that was discussed. She said there have been cases of people with cochlear implants complaining of their hearing changing – enough to complain about it – when they have colds or allergies or are taking medications that treat colds or allergies. When you bypass most of what makes a person hear, you wonder how can this be? It has to do with the proximity of the electrode to our cochlea and the cochlea membranes can fluctuate when we have allergies, colds or take medication to relieve symptoms from these conditions.

We went ahead and went through the mapping process. We made some changes, but nothing really big. It was hard to get rid of all of the echoing sound. Also, my audiologist was concerned that when I get through this allergy season, I might not like these current maps, but if that is the case, we will adjust them again.

This morning, I again took Claritin and because my face was still hurting I also took Sudafed and Ibuprofen. With the added decongestant, things were sounding a bit better. I decided to keep a journal about the medication I’m taking and how things sound.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m allergic to. I live in Southern Minnesota and when we go to our cabin which is about 250 miles north, I usually feel better. Whatever it is, it comes out in the fall.

I am frustrated and I hope I will be able to get my hearing back to where it was before this started.

I started thinking about going bilateral about a year after getting a cochlear implant in my left ear. I thought about it off and on and really didn’t get serious about it until the residual hearing in my right ear was so minimal that there wasn’t anything there that was of use to me. That was just over five years after getting my left ear implant. Along with my residual hearing having dwindled down to next to nothing, there were things that had started to bother me, such as not having any sense of direction regarding where sound was coming from, or always having to direct conversation to my left side.

In the spring of 2007 I started the process by telling my audiologist that I was ready to pursue the second implant. She had recently tested my right ear, so all the medical documentation was ready and the request was then sent in to my insurance. Approval quickly followed.

My first cochlear implant was a life changing experience for me. To have that much sound was a great relief from the struggles I experienced in communicating. I had become an excellent lip reader, but that takes a lot of energy and I was getting very tired. With the sound I received from the implant, I didn’t have to work so hard at reading lips. Over time, I learned to listen again and understand more of what I hear.

Because my deafness was severe, the amount of sound I received on one side from the implant seemed like a lot and at first I had the sensation of surround sound. Later, I started to notice that I could not tell where sound was coming from. Eventually I started turning my left side towards sounds that I wanted to hear. Finally, I felt blank on my right side and I was always trying to adjust for that.

My first implant was in 2001 and I wasn’t ready for the second until 2007. I was reluctant to part with the little bit of hearing that I had in my right ear. Bilateral implantation was something I had discussed with audiologists on several occasions, so I knew that it was being researched and the studies were showing that deaf people with bilateral implants did better than those with just one. When contemplating getting a second cochlear implant, I wondered what the next big leap in hearing technology would be. Did I want to wait for it? Ultimately, I decided that I want to live each day to its fullest now, including hearing the best that I can with today’s technology.

My husband and I met with the surgeon in early July and he would have scheduled the surgery that very summer, but for various reasons, we scheduled the surgery for that fall.

On October 10, 2007, I had my second cochlear implant surgery, to give me sound on my right side. I was hooked up one week later, on the 17th. Immediately, I felt more whole. It was an interesting feeling because I didn’t know that I wasn’t feeling whole, but during the mapping when the sound on the new implant was turned off, the sensation of silence on my right side was so strong it felt like half my world had been turned off.

I have been hearing bilaterally for 9 months now and I love it. Along with an improved understanding of sound in general, I have a better sense of direction, and like the old slogan for Doublemint gum, it is, “Double the pleasure, double the fun.” How I hear with two cochlear implants is still changing and improving, and may continue to change for some time. My right ear has a lot to recover and my left ear wants to run the show. I do have to practice some therapy by shutting off the left side to make the right side do some work and get better. As long as there is room for improvement, I will keep trying to make it better because I don’t want to miss anything! I love to hear.