Welcome To My Blog...

This blog follows my journey of 2 different cochlear implants and my condition: Multiple mitochondrial DNA deletions I have started this blog 15 yrs too late but ill try my best to fit it all in! I have packed a lot of medical jargon into my life since I was 8.

There has been happiness and tears but I've come through it all with my family and my friends.I'm profoundly deaf as a result of a condition called Multiple mitochondrial DNA deletions or mitochondrial disease RRM2B as my professor Sir Dough Turnbull calls it! I have had since birth but I didn't find out this til I was 19. I have had 2 cochlear implants (at the age of 8 and then i lost the 1st cochlear implant in my right ear after 7 years due to a bad, accruing ear infection (which I couldnt fight off because of my mitochondrial condition) at the age of 15 and had a 2nd one implanted in my left ear that same year which I have now.

My Story


16 January 2009

Louuuud noises & magnets....

I got up for volunteering this morning and went for breakfast WITHOUT the cochlear implant and I watched as my parents with their funny ways of mouthing things so I can lipread them when they are talking and trying to use little signs! In the end, sometimes they give up and just write it down for me ha! I have to leave my bathroom door open sometimes because if they need me or want to do something in the bathroom and they knock on the door, I cant hear them. I can sometimes though with their banging on the door vibrations... haha

Anyway, I chilled out on the latpop for a bit before I was due at volunteering then when it was time to get ready I would go to my room to put my cochlear implant on as when I first put my implant on, it can be loud then settle down. Except today... because my 3G esprit cochlear implant volume doesnt have a lock on it by choice, I put it on and it was sooooooooo loud! It was right at the highest volume you could put it on! So I ripped it off my ear and turned it down back to the normal 4 and a half volume. I saw it was all the way to 7!

I normally would check my volume before I put it on! Must have been a lil sleepy today!!


At volunteering at the school, we had a science lesson which I had to help one of the pupils write because his arm was in plaster as he had broken it. Imagine not being able to do anything with the hand you normally use! I would find it very fustrating!

I asked the teacher whether we would be working with magnets for science lessons and she said maybe next week, I let her know about my cochlear implant and the problems around magnets. It's always ok with little magnets such as fridge magnets but I cannot do electromagnets like they do in science classes. I was never allowed to be near an electromaget or static electricity experiements in high school so it was only fair to warn the teacher! She told me that she would let me know what magnets we will be using and I will be ok if they are just small ones! :0) I may even educate the kids on MY magnet in my head! hehe My external part of the cochlear implant sticks to somethings if it gets close enough! Such as an umberella handle when I'm holding it up and it used to stick to my bed when i had a metal bunkbed! Thankfully i have a wooden bed now! :0)

2 comments:

Marie Foulk said...

I really really hate it in the mornings.. when i put my implant on.. oh boy its loud!!!! I had to shut my eyes and hold my breath for 20 secs when its screaming at my brain.. feel like my brain going to explode!!

Laura ~Peach~ said...

oh my you would never think about having magnest under the skin unless you had them how fun and funny too... I recall the 6 weeks with my right hand and wrist in a cast OH the horror....it was so bad trying to shower to clean up after the bathroom tying shoes... impossible. always an adventure however!