What goes down, can only go back up!

Yep, you read that correct. My hearing may have seemed to decrease nearly 2 months ago, but after my last hearing test, a month ago, everything went back up. My test on basic beeps increased by 5 decibels for 250 hz, 10 db for 4000 hz, and probably 5-10 db for 8000 hz (it was not recorded on my previous test), and remained the same for the remaining hz. As of 2/22/11, I am hearing borderline right on the end of the spectrum of "normal speech level." With that range being 0 db to 20 db. My next test will be in May, and it should show slightly  more of an improvement, but it might not as I might be at my plateau, although improvements can go on for another year and a half, at the most.

My speech tests went back up to. Speech with no background noise was 68% accurate, with only 42% for speech in noise. If you'll recall, nearly 3 months ago I got about 53% or so on hearing in noise. A bit of a drop, but yet, a nice improvement compared to the actual drop I had 2 months ago. I basically got to keep working on hearing high frequency sounds, like "shhh, tsss, sss, etc," as I'm not telling them apart appropriately yet.

Any vertigo, nausea, dizziness I had 2 months ago, is now completely gone. I have been able to drink coffee and alcohol again and experienced no negative side effects. Which is kind of strange at the same time because one beer isn't giving me the buzz it use to give me, and one cup of coffee isn't making me feel fatigued and tired like it did prior to the surgery. Feels like there has been quite a shift in my brains reaction to both chemicals. Besides how great coffee tastes, I'm starting to think "what's the point?" of drinking either. They do nothing; they just taste good.

Other than all that, I am happy to say I can hear birds sing again. It is awesome. We have a handful of "song birds" and hummingbirds that fly around near our backyard because of all the trees in our neighbors backyard. I haven't heard birds sing in nearly 10 years. Also, I think we have pigeons living under our roof and they make a ton of clacking noises. I mean, it's either that, or we've got ghosts or something crawling around up there... but I'm sure it's the pigeons, because we've seen them. And we're going to kill them. (Naw, we're just gonna get them from being able to stay in our roof).

Latest annoyance I can hear: things rolling around in the car when I'm driving. Was a lot less worrisome when I couldn't hear bottles and trash rolling around when I turn corners, but now it's just really annoying that men can't throw their garbage out. (or girls, if you're messy).

How am I doing with conversations? Pretty well. In fact, for the first time in ages, I had a week long chat with my visiting stepdad and I didn't have to say "what?" a billion times or lean in really close to hear him all the time. I felt "normal." It was nice. Now, I can't wait to experience the same with my mom when she visits sometime this year because she's usually a lot harder for me to hear.