Oh yeah. We are a multi-disability household! In the most recent test, his hearing is down to about 10% in one ear, with comprehension about as bad, and his left ear is at 40% hearing loss. The BAHA (Bone Anchored Hearing Aid) sends the sound vibrating through his skull to his other ear, which has a conventional hearing aid. It's not a cochlear implant, but if things get worse it will become one.
How the BAHA worksIt's a really interesting idea, even though slightly less than ultimate technology really. But get this-- his BAHA will have a plug in for a MP3 player! OMG!
The bad part is it's quite gross-looking. The surgery involves ***WARNING GRAPHIC!*** cutting a slit behind the bad ear, lifting the flap to remove all the follicles, scraping all the tissue and muscle out down to the bone, and drilling a titanium screw a bit into the skull so it can osseointegrate, then kinda sliding it all back together and attaching an abutment to the site, then bandaging it all up.
Pic of a well-healed site So needless, perhaps, to say I'm alternating between basket case and mental defective, and really would like very little more than getting the hell out of my job for a few months. Of course, I'll probably end up teaching something, because we still need the money-- one of the big reasons to deplete the savings for the BAHA is that Bear really is unemployable without proper hearing, but likely not disabled enough for any type of disability and he's not of retirement age. Sigh.
So yeah. Good news is that the last MRI didn't show new lesions, just old scars. I have since decided "Scars on my Brain" will be my autobiography title. Bad news is that I still haven't found a way back to any form of my center or any state of relaxation and calmness. It's insane here, and I struggle to not dislike it so much more each day. It would be best if I cared less, but that's hard to do for me. ARG!
Why can't I lose weight rather than sleep, dammit?
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