"C" What It Is All About

I've decided to stay at C 2 for now. I bumped up to 3 but felt some noises are just too loud and almost sound slightly staticky. Hopefully it's just a matter of me needing to adjust and not a feedback issue. Michelle said that one spectrum of feedback was reported as sounding almost like waves crashing, I think. It's hard to remember now. Maybe a low buzzing? Anyway, the static sound could be that and maybe I still have some fluid in the ear affecting the implant. I occassionally take a decongestant and antihistamine combo still just to help with that. Oh, and good news! The tinnitus in my right ear is really minimal!

There isn't much exciting in the last week in hearing new sounds. I find myself getting a bit annoyed at night time when I'm trying to sleep though. I don't like hearing noise when I'm falling asleep. I'm a very light sleeper, so now that I can hear most things it startles me awake. And the white noise machine my husband uses to relax him distracts me from sleep! I've been sleeping on my right side now so my "bad" ear is up to the room and then I don't hear hardly anything, just the way I like to sleep:) I don't want to turn the implant off at night because then I can't hear the alarm clock go off in the morning for work.

One thing I wanted to mention for those of you wanting info about the Esteem financing payment plan is that they give you two choices for monthly payments. 3 and 4 years to pay off the borrowed amount. Typically they expect half down and half financed. My situation was a special one and since I was asked to make a split decision on having this done, they allowed me to finance 100% of the cost. However, my husband and I did have $4000.00 to put down and then financed the rest. But there is also a $750.00 finance fee you have to add to the cost as well. We got an 8% medical loan interest rate, which isn't great but not bad either. We're hoping to be able to save enough money to pay off the balance by late summer, early fall 2012 now that I'm working again. We'll see!
And we'd also like to be able to pay my mother-in-law back the money she gave me to get this done even though she says it was a gift.

Something else I have to write about is the itchiness of the incision and the whole area of skin over and around the implant. IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY!!! I scratch at it all the time and the incision is still tender so once the itch goes away, then the area around the incision throbs because I've irritated it. It's a vicious cycle, because I just can't leave it alone.

But on a positive note, my taste is still improving. There is one spot on the side of my tongue on the right that is completely devoid of taste, but the rest of it is getting better! I'd say it's at least 40-50% normal now.