This summer will bring some changes to Contemporary Candles.
If you’ve ever read the “About Us” page, you know that Dave and I both have hearing loss. We don’t do business over the phone and we don’t do craft shows because of this — the phone is just too difficult hearing-wise and craft shows have too much background noise.
In April of this year, I lost the rest of my hearing (in my left ear — the only ear that had any hearing left). It was very unexpected and rather sudden, happening over a period of 3 or 4 days. Nobody knows why — sudden sensorineural hearing loss usually happens for unknown reasons. It wasn’t a completely new experience for me because I lost all the hearing in my right ear 15 years ago in a very similar manner. However, this most recent loss has left me absolutely, completely deaf.
Previously I managed very well with my hearing aids and lip reading. I never learned sign language because I didn’t need to use it to communicate — I could hear well enough to hold conversations as long as I could lip read as well. (That’s why the telephone posed so many problems!)
Learning sign language is a very time-consuming, long process. It’s not too hard to learn a few signs, and I can finger-spell (slowly) but to use it solely to communicate with people would take a year or more before I became adept. And everyone else in my family and the hearing world I live in would have to learn it too. So I’m learning, but since I’m not part of Deaf Culture and surrounded by people who sign, I’m not sure how much I’ll actually use sign language except with Dave (who is helping me learn, since he knows much more than I do).
In the meantime, I’ve been exploring cochlear implants (CI). A CI is like a little computer inserted into your cochlea — a tiny array of electrodes. As sound comes into the electrodes via an external microphone and speech processor, the sound is converted to data that is sent directly to my hearing nerve. That’s a really simplistic explanation (and hopefully correct — I’m just typing from memory here) but it basically is a little miracle device! I never really knew much about CI’s because I always thought you had to be completely deaf to get one, and it didn’t apply to me before.
Well, I’ve been seeing doctors and audiologists to be evaluated for a cochlear implant. I’ve had an MRI to make sure there’s no problem with my cochleas, no tumors, etc. And just a few days ago, my insurance company approved two cochlear implants for me. I’ll be one of the few people in the world that’s receiving simultaneous bilateral cochlear implants! Instead of getting one implant and then going back a few months or a year later to have the second ear done, I’ll be getting both ears done at once. I’m a little scared because the recovery will probably be rough — I won’t be able to sleep on either side, I’ll have to keep my head elevated, and I could end up with bad dizziness/vertigo as well as disturbances to my taste nerves or facial nerves. But I still feel like one surgery is better than two (and it saves money as well, having just one surgery).
Since we just found out that I’ve been approved, we aren’t sure when my surgery will be. After I have surgery, I have to wait about a month for swelling to go down and for my incisions to heal before I go for “activation”, where they actually give me the external parts of my CI’s and map the electrodes so that I can hear. So I’ll still be totally deaf while I recover.
Once I start going for mappings, my brain will need to learn how to interpret the data it’s receiving from the CI’s. I’ll never actually hear sound again, so I’ll always be deaf. But with a lot of training and auditory therapy, my brain should be able to learn how to translate the data from the electrodes into sounds. It’s going to take a lot of work but I’m ready and willing!
After I’m squared away, Dave may look into a CI as well. He’s completely deaf in one ear and now there are many people who have a CI in one ear and a hearing aid in the other. If he can receive a CI in his deaf ear, he can still use his hearing aid in his other ear, which has a severe hearing loss.
I’m talking about this now because although we’ve been able to work around the minor interruptions for the doctor visits and testing for the past few months, this summer will be different. We’ll definitely have to shut down for a while after I have my surgery, but we won’t know the exact duration until the surgery is over and we see how I’m doing. There may be times when we’ll have to shut down for a couple of days here and there, depending on how I’m feeling and how time-consuming the mapping and auditory therapy sessions are.
Of course, the website will be open 24/7 to accept orders so that’s not a problem. We’ll update order processing times here on the blog, and in your order confirmation emails as well. I’ll probably post a notice on the website before I go in for surgery, when we’ll close for at least 4 days and possibly more (as well as 2 or 3 days before I go in for surgery, to give us time to finish up any orders we currently have). Closing just means that no processing will be done on orders — you can still place orders, however.
That’s about it…wish me luck! 
