Tiring

This is a bit of a follow on to my last post and I'm going to talk about how tiring it can be sometimes when you have a medical condition with hospital appointments and other things to think about. I am wary of making this blog too self-pitying but at the same time I want to be honest and share the difficulties that I and others like me face.

It is fair to say that trialing the BAHA and then switching to it full time has been tiring. It is tiring to go to an audiology appointment and get your hearing tested. You sit there with this headset on your head and have to press a button that you hold if you hear a beep. The problem is that when you are in that situation it is difficult to figure out if you are actually hearing a quiet beep or imagining it. It is also difficult when you think that there is a pattern to it so you think oh there must be a beep but you aren't 100% sure. It is also tiring to get information basically thrown at you and be asked questions about how the hearing aid is when you haven't had time to actually test it in your normal routines. You have to be prepared and have questions ready to go for appointments and you also have to make decisions in a short amount of time. It can also be tiring when you are dealing with multiple people (say an audiologist and a representative of the hearing aid company) in the same appointment. Having people go on at you about getting a BAHA implant and about how much better it is than the softband is especially tiring especially when they don't have any personal experience and it's not them that will be going through it.

Following on from this it can be tiring thinking about surgeries in general. I always have thoughts at the back of my mind about the possibility of surgeries and whether or not I would want to undergo any procedures. In the past I have doctors basically give me lists of things I could get done:

• Jaw surgery to bring my lower jaw forward
• Chin implants
• Cheekbone implants
• Surgery to give me normal looking ears
• Surgery to improve my airway
• Surgery to straighten my nose

There are probably others that I have forgotten. As an adult any decision I make will be my own responsibility, I can get advice from doctors and other people but in the end it will be me who has to live with the aftermath and that includes if things don't work out or something happens like nerve damage or something worse. I might expand on this in future posts but at the moment I'll just say that I'm happy with how things are but it's something I will always have at the back of my mind.

There is also the issue of having to keep on top of things such as taking care of your hearing aid, making sure you have enough batteries and making sure you have a backup aid especially when you go away on holiday. When I needed the Fortisip it became a case of having to bring the bottles in a coolbag and having a letter from a doctor explaining to the airport staff why I needed to bring all this liquid with me. As I mentioned previously I also had to make the effort to get an In Case of Emergency card made up and laminated as well as sending messages to friends to let them know about it for any worst case scenario where it might be needed.

All in all having these things to remember or having to go through hospital appointments where lots of information thrown at you can be quite tiring. That said I'm aware that other people likely have it worse and it is fortunate that now I'm older I don't have as many hospital appointments.

Thanks for reading,

James.