Time for my upgrades, the trendy nucleus 5's!
But what was meant to be an exciting day wasn't all that exciting- I was so happy to finally have the smaller, sleeker implants; my life seemed to be made. I had compact and standard rechargeable batteries-more flexibility with how I can wear my processor-what every deaf teenager dreams of!
Another thing every teenager loves doing is listening to music, but as a deaf person music is still as enjoyable as long as you have the correct accessories...unfortunately for me I wasn't provided with a direct cable like I had done when I had my previous upgrade, I was so excited to be getting a bilateral audio input-looks like I was going to have to order my own and wait for the stereo sound.
So what used to be provided for free by the NHS now costs £60-yes £60! But that's not all I also had to buy a freedom adapter to ensure my previous Freedom implant cable would be compatible with my new processors-another £60, the money soon mounts up-but we really need to pay this much to be able to have a better quality of sound? This shows how much of a disadvantage deaf people are as we need extra accessories to be able to enjoy the world of sound, but we shouldn't have to pay for them, if anything NHS could at least subsidise this cost of the accessories.
I worry for the future of the deaf community as the BBC reports that; Action on Hearing Loss has collected data from 128 hospitals and 'found more than 40% had seen cuts in the past 18 months.' So what does this worrying statistic suggest? That we're going to experience more than a lack of accessories? Something needs to be done!
But what was meant to be an exciting day wasn't all that exciting- I was so happy to finally have the smaller, sleeker implants; my life seemed to be made. I had compact and standard rechargeable batteries-more flexibility with how I can wear my processor-what every deaf teenager dreams of!
Another thing every teenager loves doing is listening to music, but as a deaf person music is still as enjoyable as long as you have the correct accessories...unfortunately for me I wasn't provided with a direct cable like I had done when I had my previous upgrade, I was so excited to be getting a bilateral audio input-looks like I was going to have to order my own and wait for the stereo sound.
So what used to be provided for free by the NHS now costs £60-yes £60! But that's not all I also had to buy a freedom adapter to ensure my previous Freedom implant cable would be compatible with my new processors-another £60, the money soon mounts up-but we really need to pay this much to be able to have a better quality of sound? This shows how much of a disadvantage deaf people are as we need extra accessories to be able to enjoy the world of sound, but we shouldn't have to pay for them, if anything NHS could at least subsidise this cost of the accessories.
I worry for the future of the deaf community as the BBC reports that; Action on Hearing Loss has collected data from 128 hospitals and 'found more than 40% had seen cuts in the past 18 months.' So what does this worrying statistic suggest? That we're going to experience more than a lack of accessories? Something needs to be done!
3 comments:
I am getting a different 'earphones' as I have both Freedom and N5, which is mainly found in the Listening Bus. They are both like earhooks and all you need is to change your processors to Telecoil and music will be transferring music to your processors, much better than direct cables!
Well said Kathryn. Just like me with trying to get avastin on the nhs for breast cancer, what a joke! Thought things were supposed to improve with time, not get worse! X
Audio cables/direct inpput cables have never been supplied by the NHS for people who wear hearing aids, not even people who are very profoundly deaf and wear hearing aids.
Why should people who wear CIs get them supplied free of charge?
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