My Dear Santa Letter and Wish

All I want for Christmas this year is my 2 Hearing Aids so I can hear my children, family and friends when they speak to me instead of having to ask them to speak up so I can hear them. Is that to much to ask for? I guess it could be when it'll cost $4300.00 in order to get my hearing aids.

So today was my follow up appointment with the audiologist aka the hearing aid dr. I went to find out what the next step would be, ordering, payments etc so I could see where we stood. After looking at the many different types of h/a's I decided on the over the ear type since I have long hair and almost always wear it down. These were no more expensive than the in the ear kind so I figured why bother paying more.

Granted the price wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined but that's still alot of money at Christmas time especially when you don't have the funding to pay it. I will be visiting the bank fairy as I like to call them and praying we can get a loan to cover them and actually be able to afford the payments. Our credit isn't the best though it's not terrible but ya know how banks are.

This has been a hard road to travel becoming deaf at approx 27 yrs old though I didn't know til I was 30. My first clue should have been when I was pregnant with my youngest because I started noticing that my ears seemed to be stopped up. I had and have been having terrible sinus/allergy problems so I contributed it to that. When I was working in 2004/2005 I did notice my hearing when I was on the phone was starting to be worse but I didn't think anything of it.

Fast forward to after my little one was born, our tv volume has the numbers on it. I used to be able to hear it at 28 to 30 and thought anything over 30 was very loud....right now I have to listen to it at 45 plus in order to hear it. My hearing disorder is progressive meaning it'll continue over time to worsen, but thankfully the hearing aids will be able to be adjusted to that.

I am working on moving all my hearing problem posts over to my blog that I started call, Hear Today Gone Tomorrow...thought it was fitting. So I'll post when that blog is up and there's something to read on it.

Wish me luck on my hearing aid money situation. If you are in the holiday spirit and have a little girl who would love a Rose Petal Cottage I have one on ebay to raise money for my h/a's.
You can check it out here.

Follow up with ENT

Well the news not so good... I am apparently pretty deaf in both ears with my left ear being the worst. It seems to be a hereditary issue as my mom is deaf in her left ear (she could have surgery) and also being fair/blonde is another factor per the dr. I had to do a hearing test that lasted about 30 mins between both ears and couldn't hear quite a bit of the sounds etc they were doing.

I have 2 options to "remedy" the situation. I can either have surgery in both ears to try to fix it or I can get hearing aids for both ears. I have not decided what I am going to do at this point, I am a bit down right now as I was worried that my hearing problem was serious. I do have a consultation with the hearing aid specialist in early Oct and then the surgeon in early Nov and once I weigh out all the options then I will make a decision on what to do.

The surgery isn't a "major" one, however 1% of the patients lose total hearing in the ear. If I was to have it done I would start with my left ear since its the worst , literally can barely hear anything at all. The dr showed me the chart on where I tested at, and there is the gray area which is average and anything in that is good, but I can barely hear the "average" on any of the sounds they were all below average and my left ear was way below closer to being zero hearing I think.

The name of the problem is Stapedial Otosclerosis if anyone is curious. I appreciate everyone's kinds thoughts as the last 2 days has been kind of rough.