As you can see in this image, the speech banana is the aptly-named area on an audiogram where most spoken sounds fall. Certain letters/phonics are easier to hear than others, and it's a helpful visual aid that does a good job of illustrating how even mild hearing loss can make speech processing difficult. (The horizontal axis of the audiogram is the frequency/pitch of the sound, and the vertical axis represents the volume in decibels. The lower you go on the vertical axis, the louder the sound.)
I notice that words that have hard "k" sounds or end with "s" or "th" are much harder for me to get when I'm only listening through my processor. Fortunately, I don't have to listen that way because I still have normal hearing in my right ear, but I'd like to be able to one day use the processor as a built-in Bluetooth headset to talk on the phone, or to stream a podcast. I don't think I'm there yet -- when I try listening to NPR's five minute hourly news updates through my processor, I struggle to get all the words, though I can usually understand the gist of each topic. These days, I'm also working on numbers with the Cochlear Co-Pilot app -- practical things like dollar amounts and street addresses, which are all potentially helpful for talking on the phone.
This morning I placed the hearing banana and my latest audiogram side-by-side (does that mean I created a bananagram?) to see where my hearing still needs to improve. It's not a perfect juxtaposition because the images aren't exactly the same size, but it's pretty close:
So... my banana is kind of upside-down, which tracks with the sounds I still have trouble hearing. My next appointment with audiology is in mid-November, and it will be interesting to compare the audiogram from September with a new one.
I also want to ask about swapping out the magnet on my processor for a slightly weaker one. I've noticed recently that my head starts to really hurt in the evenings after wearing my processor all day. (If you've ever worn your hair in a too-tight ponytail or braid for a long period, imagine that same sensation only localized to one part of the scalp and a lot more painful.) I've since learned that the magnet can actually cause the skin of the scalp to break down if it's too strong. Fortunately, I have these little stick-on cushions I can attach to the magnet side of my processor. They're called SoftWear (cute) and they do a good job of alleviating the pain -- but they also have a slight dampening effect on the electrical signals the implant receives, which means certain sounds aren't as loud or as clear as they could be. I started with a strong magnet at activation because I still had a fair amount of post-op swelling, but now that that's over I think I can probably drop down a notch. If I can't make a weaker magnet work, though, Dr. Scheib can always reprogram the processor to compensate and I'll continue using the SoftWear pads.
And if you got through that paragraph without a headache yourself, you deserve a little Bananarama: