Auditory rehabilitation

Today we start with an important question, what is hearing rehabilitation? how does it work? what is it for? why should it be done?

When I went deaf in October 2020 (after the initial panic I felt like things were not happening to me, like I was looking at another person’s life from the outside) they operated on me and put in the cochlear implant (to the ear). right), in order to hear.

The cochlear implant is an electronic device that reproduces sounds and “sends” them directly to the auditory nerve, making it heard. And for the deaf she is a mother from heaven, otherwise you don’t hear anything.

However, when they told me that they would put the implant on me, dragged by events, I didn’t even realize and I immediately thought “oh well, they put the implant on me and then I hear again … everything is resolved”. A few days after the operation they “turned me on”, that is, they turned on the implant and saw all the electrodes if everything worked. And I heard them again. But I was not even so moved, I was in a hurry to be well, to resume my life.

But I heard the sounds, I understood a few words … but then that’s it. It does not feel as it was before, unfortunately certain nuances of the sounds are lost and it will be very difficult to take them back. It takes rehabilitation to associate that word with that sound.

example. If you talk to me and say “egg”, if I don’t see the lip I can understand “man, hard, flight, colo” and many other varieties. Even funny I would say or embarrassing, it depends on the point of view.

Now then rehabilitation is a subjective thing, in the sense that each person has his own times. I’m still doing it and it’s not like I’ll be able to finish it anytime soon. The explanation for this slowness lies in the fact that my autoimmune meningitis, when it is reactivated, “inflames” the nervous system and therefore also the acoustic nerve and obviously hearing suffers. Furthermore, let’s also say that in all the hospitalizations I have had I lost a lot of time.

In this period, my rehabilitation is one session per week, which I do via the web. But at the beginning they were two a week, in person, in Milan with the speech therapist. And a lot of exercises to do at home. Talk to a person who covers their mouth. Repeat words, phrases, names.

The good thing is that my speech therapist is a force, she helps me, we laugh, we joke. And these are no small things. Never underestimate the power of laughter in a misunderstood sentence.

And here is a sordamaldestra adventure on Saturday. Casa Londra, There are many external noises that I still cannot understand (ambulances, traffic, the noise of a horn). I take vacuum cleaner. I turn on and start cleaning. The sound seemed strange to me but I pretended nothing happened … (a sweat that here is monstrously hot). The husband comes to me laughing and makes me “look it’s off”. A second goes by when I don’t know how to react. I pretend nothing has happened. I turn on the vacuum cleaner and clean while I cry. The crying does not last long though, because it was so hot that I turned off everything.

I went out and went to the savor festival (as in the stories and on instagram).

Ps in the coming weeks the rehabilitation is suspended due to holidays … I continue to talk and exercise.