Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Really?

Really? It's been that long since I wrote here? Sigh. It seems like I blink and half a year has gone by. I'm trying to remember where I was so I can bring you up to date.

Everything continues along fine... boys doing well in school, active in their sports (it's basketball time for Jr. Jr. and always cycling time for Sr. Jr.) and other activities. The holidays were fun, even if there wasn't much in the way of knitting or spinning time (more on that later).

In other "Really?" news, I finally went in to get my hearing checked. I've had a hearing deficit since I was a kid, mostly in my left ear. My parents thought it was due to fluid in my ears/high fevers as a child/ear infections. It wasn't bad enough to keep me from functioning, more of an occasional annoyance. My mother always told me that it wasn't the type of hearing loss that a hearing aid would help.

Well, that turns out not to be true. When I said something about it to my father over the summer he said, "No, that's not the case. Your mother just wanted you to learn how to lip-read." Really? I remember going to lip-reading classes when I was very young, like 4 or 5, and hating every minute of it. I can't lip-read.

But my hearing has been getting worse and it's gotten to the point where I really felt like I was missing a lot of stuff. One on one, I'm usually fine, but put me in a loud restaurant or with a group of people, and it becomes very hard for me. Our house is on the biggish side, so with kids talking to me from different rooms, with music playing, etc., it becomes very hard for me to hear them.

So I bit the bullet and went. What I learned was very interesting. I learned that my hearing loss is not because of any scarring of the eardrum or because of the bones in my middle ear, but is in the cochlea, in the inner ear. There is now hearing loss in both ears, in what is called a "cookie bite" pattern, meaning that my hearing is better for the really low frequencies (vowel sounds) and the really high frequencies (consonant sounds), and pretty terrible at everything in between. This (and the fact that my right ear is somewhat better than my left) has been my saving grace all along, as the things I hear better are the things that make up speech.

Apparently, this cookie bite pattern is more indicative of a genetic hearing loss than a loss due to an injury from infection, etc.

I mentioned this to my father, who said, "I'm trying to figure out who gave this to you. I have hearing loss, as did my mother, but that's from the diabetes (they both developed type II later in life) and my hearing didn't start to go bad until I was in my 40s." Um, Dad, REALLY? You didn't develop the diabetes until you were in your 60s and HOW OLD AM I??

The potentially bad news is that my left ear may not regain acuity, even with a hearing aid, because it's gone unaided for so long that the neural connections may not be able to form. We'll see. The doctor said that I was young enough that it was possible I could overcome that.

So I go in tomorrow to get some hearing aids. Should be interesting to see how I adjust and how much of a difference it makes.

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I finished my sweater spin, finally! I even started knitting the sweater. I love it.


I already started spinning yarn for another sweater. I'm not sure how that one will turn out (more colorful, as opposed to tonal like this one), but we'll see.

I finished Pipit, too, and I also love it! This sweater is so comfortable and so versatile. I wish I could wear it every day. The pattern was fun and interesting to knit, too.



And just so the spinning doesn't get shortchanged, here's pics of the Cupcake Fiber spinning that I showed you last time all spun up:



Right now, as always, I want to knit and spin all the things, but have very little time to do any of it. I really want to finish the handspun sweater, because I think that will be fabulous to wear! At this rate, however, and with the "winter" we're having, I won't get to wear it until next year.

1 comment:

kippi said...

All the things you now hear that you didn't before might make for some awesome blog fodder!

LOVE the handspun sweater. Perfect pattern for the yarn. And Pipit looks amazing on you.