A former hearing loss patient offers rehab tips for restoring your hearing.
A former patient offers rehab tips for restoring hearing
By Julie Husting
I had perfect hearing until I was 17 years old, when I was diagnosed with a moderate hearing loss. I wore two hearing aids for 30 years but eventually, I was told I had a profound hearing loss and it was recommended that I get cochlear implants. My first cochlear implant surgery was in October 2012, and I got my second one six months later.
My speech comprehension went from 4% to 94%. This did not happen overnight. It takes a lot of hard work to gain comprehension and, believe me, I worked at it. Getting a cochlear implant is a miracle but it is not a quick fix. It is very much like getting a knee transplant. You have surgery and they send you home with a walker. You then do a lot of exercises and you move up to a cane. You go to physical therapy and do a lot of rehab and then you can walk with a limp. You exercise some more and then you can walk better. Those people that never do any therapy will likely always use a cane. Those that stop too soon may always have a limp.
I am a volunteer mentor for Advanced Bionics and Dr. Shohet’s office. I help people along their hearing journey in getting cochlear implants, and those that have them but aren’t satisfied with them. Whenever people tell me that they aren’t understanding words or are frustrated with what they are hearing, the first thing I ask them is what kind of rehab they are doing and how long they do it each day. The second thing I ask is how many hours a day they take their hearing aid out of their other ear and only use the cochlear implant. The majority of those who have problems are not doing any rehab and are not using the cochlear implant by themselves. These people are still in the “walker” stage and they aren’t going to get past it until they are willing to do some work.
Having a cochlear implant is a brand new way for your ear to hear. Hearing aids basically amplify what your ear can hear. Sound travels through your ear canal and hits your auditory nerve. If the hair fibers that carry that sound are damaged, then sound isn’t getting through. So hearing aids are only amplifying part of the sound, which is why speech isn’t clear. A cochlear implant bypasses the ear canal and the damaged areas and stimulates the auditory nerve directly. So now speech has the opportunity to become clear. But your brain has not used a cochlear implant to hear before and, depending on your hearing history, it might not have heard clearly for a very long time, if at all. That is why, just like getting a new knee, you have to teach your brain how to use this new way of hearing.
I did an hour a day of “active” listening rehab every day. I looked at that hour as if it were simply a class I was taking–probably the most important class I ever took in my life. I also did many hours of “passive” listening throughout the day. That means that I took my hearing aid out and watched TV, went to work, and turned the radio on while I worked so that I constantly had some kind of sound on all the time.
There are many different rehab exercises that you can do–from beginning to advanced and in different categories based on your needs like hearing better in noise, speech comprehension, music, and using the telephone. The key, of course, is to do the exercises. What follows are some great tools to help you in areas where you may need it most.
Speech comprehension
When I was in the early stages with my implant, I found that I could not understand speech while just listening to something. I had to have visual cues to make the speech clear. I had to read lips or read along with what I was listening to. If I listened to audio books on their own, it was just noise. But once I started reading along to the book that I was listening to, speech became clear. The same thing happened with music. Here are some exercises that I found helpful.
To help with speech comprehension, read along while listening to audio books for a half hour each day. Begin with children’s books and work your way up to adult novels. Many libraries allow you to check out both the CDs and the physical book. There are also free audio books in the app store that you can download and read on your mobile devices. If you do not have access to any listening devices, then ask someone to read to you. But be sure to read along with what they are reading.
Another exercise that works very well is having someone read closed set word lists to you. A closed set word list is a list of words that you make up that are categorized. For example, days of the week, months, holidays, family names, colors, animals, names of flowers or different sports teams, for example. First make up your list of about ten items in each category. Then give the list to someone and have him tell you which category he is going to read from. Then close your eyes and have them read a word from the list in random order. You then repeat what you heard back to them. Your brain knows it has to be one of those ten words and amazingly, it will be able to pick out which word it is. Keep practicing the different word lists until it becomes too easy. When that happens, mix up the words from all of the categories.
When you are in your car, turn your radio on. Pay particular attention to the commercials. They often repeat the name of the sponsor. You can use the commercials as a gauge on how well you are progressing. You likely won’t understand any of them in the beginning but, as you advance, the commercials will become a bit more clear. Do the same thing with TV programs. News broadcasts are the easiest to understand because broadcasters speak fairly clearly. Reality shows are the hardest. Try to watch a little bit without captions on and see how much you can understand.
Apps for Rehab
A computer program that is also now an app is Angel Sound. You can download it for free. There are many different modules that specialize in certain areas like words, telephone or music. Start with the basic module—it offers rehab on tones, environmental sounds, vowels, consonants, male and female voices, everyday sentences and more. I recommend doing at least ten minutes of Angel Sound a day. This program really teaches you to listen for the differences in words. The bonus is that it starts out at a beginner level and it progresses as you progress.
Hear Coach by Starkey is an app that you can use on your phone or tablet. There are five different levels. The first one is without any noise. Once you master that level, it unlocks the next one which includes some noise that sounds like road noise. There are five levels and each one adds a different level of background noise like voices and music. These levels make you really focus on the words and tune out the noises around you.
Advanced Bionics has an app called AB Clix (ABle). This is a word program, as well, that has harder and harder levels as you progress.
Movies
Did you know that movie theaters now have captioning devices? Some theaters use Sony glasses, where the captions appear on the lenses while you watch. Other theaters use screen devices that you lodge into the cupholder and position where you want it. The captions appear on the screen. Use the captioned devices and see, as time goes on, how much you can understand without having to look at the devices.
Phones
For help on the phone, Cochlear America has an 800 number that you can call every day. You can listen to a word list each day as well as a short story. You can go to their website and actually pull up the transcript so that you can read along with what you are listening to. In the beginning, read along with what you are hearing. As you get better, listen first, then read along, then listen again without reading along.
Music
There are different exercises that you can do to help you with music as well. Try to think of a song that you remember–one that does not have a lot of instruments works best. Go to YouTube and look up the song. You can even type in the name of the song and put “with lyrics” in the search field, and you will find the lyrics on the video that you are watching. Listen to the song each day or at least once a week and see how it changes over time. You will likely be able to hear the difference in your song. There is a good YouTube video that has various instruments playing. See if you can tell which instrument is playing before you see it being played.
If you have an Advanced Bionics cochlear implant, you can use their Musical Atmospheres website. You have to register and they have to approve you before you can begin using the site. Once you are approved, you will see that there are a lot of different exercises that will help you distinguish the difference in various instruments.
If you have prior knowledge of songs, you might have fun playing the Song Pop app on your phone or tablet. You choose the genre of music that you want to play. It plays only a small portion of the song and gives you several choices to choose from. For this app, you actually play against others. The winner is the person that gets the most songs right in the shortest amount of time. If you are playing with a regular hearing person you will likely lose but don’t let that deter you! The purpose, for you, isn’t to win, it’s just to listen and see what you can recognize.
Noise
A great computer program that is good for hearing in noise can be found at ReadMyQuips. It has a crossword puzzle that you fill in by watching videos and figuring out words that are being said. If you are still reading lips, then go ahead and watch the person speaking. If you want a bigger challenge, listen without watching the video. If you don’t understand then play it again–the level of noise is reduced each time you play it.
Facebook Group
I have created a Facebook group called Cochlear Implant Daily Rehab. I post four exercises every day, such as the current Cochlear America telephone exercise, an Angel Sound exercise and an “extra credit” exercise. I invite you to join our group.
People ask me how long it took for me to get from 4% comprehension to 94%. The reality is you shouldn’t compare your progress with mine or anyone else. There are many factors that will determine how long it takes for you to improve. Your age, how long were you able to hear well before you lost your hearing, how long you have had a hearing problem, how much stimulation you have given your auditory nerve–in other words, did you wear hearing aids or were you completely deaf? But the biggest factor is: how much rehab do you do? How many hours a day have you been listening to sound? You can continue to make progress as long as you stick with it. So whatever you do, don’t give up! Better hearing is within reach.