Mapping No. 4

A couple of days ago I had my 4th mapping appointment, 5 weeks to the day after activation. In the 2 weeks since my last appointment I had steadily increased the volume level to nearly the 3 o'clock position on the dial, so it was time for more adjustments.

The first thing my audiologist did was stick me in the booth for some sentence and tone tests. The last time I had that done was for my CI candidacy screening back in October. For many years the sentence test has been a futile and mildly frustrating event. If you are normal hearing and want a simulation, try stuffing some good ear plugs in your ears, set your clock radio to a talk program, put a pillow over it and try to repeat what you hear. The sentence test is a pre-recorded male voice, calibrated to a normal conversational level, speaking random sentences such as, "the two boys played in the rain," or "she put her purse on the table." Sitting in the booth waiting for the test to start, I was subconsciously gearing up for the usual strain when a man said quite clearly something like, "the boy threw the baseball through the window." I easily repeated it. This went on for several minutes. I guessed on a couple of words, and only missed one sentence completely (in which, as my audiologist explained later, the speaker had practically yelled something about "the angry man..."). Four separate tests were run. My scores ranged from 93% to 100%. Amazing. And that was with my old map. Sure, it was in a quiet setting with no background noise to interfere, but I only scored 13% before my CI!

Next up was a tone test. I didn't get a hard copy of the test results but I took a quick look at it. At the lower frequencies, which we kept lower at my last mapping, my threshold was in the 40 dB to 35 dB range. Then it dropped to 20 dB at 2 kHz before climbing a bit to 25 dB at 4 kHz. A 20 dB or lower threshold is considered normal hearing, so I'm doing great. And, again, that was with my old map.

A quick shuffling of cables and I was connected to the Advanced Bionics laptop for a mapping. We decided to keep the same 3 program strategies and just crank the levels. We ended up boosting the low frequencies a bit more relative to the highs on my HiRes-S programs, so I think my tone test would be flatter now. One thing I noticed more than during previous mappings was the distinct difference in the quality of sound when Fidelity-120 is ON or OFF (F-120 is AB's new feature that increases the number of spectral bands dramatically). When F-120 is OFF, my audiologist's voice has a slight "buzziness" to it; when ON it is smoother, more natural.

We finished up the session with a discussion about my right ear hearing-aid and HiRes-P vs. HiRes-S (two different electrode stimulation strategies). She gave me the green light to use the hearing-aid as often as I want. So far I've been liking HiRes-S better, for speech especially, but I still want to spend some time testing HiRes-P. I was listening to some music a few days ago, switching between P and S, and I think P might be better. Also, there is the chance that, once I get more accustomed to the CI, P might be better for everything -- so I don't want to discard it from my available programs.


The number I mentioned in my prior post was... hold on to your hat, or grab your underwear, or something... the total billed cost of my CI, surgery and activation. Sobering, huh? It deserves to be on a t-shirt, or a tattoo. I keep getting things in the mail detailing the breakdowns of all this and each time I hold my breath because they look like bills. Though I was covered under a top-tier HMO and I'm quite sure we only pay a small co-pay, it's still enough to give one the willies. I feel fortunate to have received this magnificent technology, but I also feel very fortunate that I didn't need to take out a second mortgage to pay for it.