How many of you have been to an audiologist for testing? I used to think that all they did was test your hearing, but I found out differently yesterday. I had occasion to go to an audiologist for some testing. I must say that I found it very interesting. If you've never been to one, here is how the testing goes (at least how it went for me):
The technician's name was Alissa. We went into the tiny anechoic room with two chairs, a table, and some test equipment. The room wasn't much bigger than my cubicle, and the ceiling felt sort of low. She started out by asking some questions about why I was
there, etc. The first test she did was to put this wand in
my ear that gave little puffs of air and played some loud noises to
check my inner ear response. Next came the traditional hearing test
where they play tones and you press the button when you hear tones (no matter how faint).
Then, she did an extra thing where she put this apparatus on my head
that sort of clamped down and vibrated near the base of my skull, and I was supposed to click the button again if I heard tones.
Apparently they were checking some of the bones in the ear somehow by
vibrating my skull? I'm not completely sure. I do know that when they were
doing low tones it felt kind of good - almost like a massage. But it also felt kind of weird.
The last part of the test in the anechoic chamber involved listening to a guy saying, "You will say ______." He went through a whole series of words where I had to repeat the word that he said. You will say carve. "Carve". You will say east. "East." You will say ace. "Ace." You will say jam. "Jam." Like that. With different words for each ear. At the end of that, Alissa said my hearing was fine. And that's good.....
Then we went to a different room and they hooked up the
sensors. One on the outside corner of each of my eyes, one on my
forehead, and one underneath my right eye. Then they had me look at
this light bar that was probably 6" x 5'. The light bar displayed a red dot, and I was supposed to follow the dot with my eyes. They did both vertical
and horizontal movement and had me follow a "train" of dots with my eyes. I'm
not sure, but I'm guessing that might have been their calibration to
"learn" my normal eye movements. Next were some measurements that they
took while I closed my eyes and did some mental exercises like counting
down from 100 out loud, counting down from 50, counting by 2's, counting by 3's,
and counting by 4's.
Next came the most interesting part. Alissa had me lay down with my eyes
closed, and she blew warm air (using a machine, not her breath) in one of my ears for 50
seconds, then she quit and had me do a focus activity again with my
eyes still closed. For example, name a girl's name starting with A, B,
C, etc. Alissa, Becky, Candace, Debbie, Ellen, Faith, Grace, Helen, Irene, Jennifer, Kelly, Melissa, Nancy. The really interesting thing is that near the end of the 50 seconds of warm air I would start to feel slightly dizzy. Then, once she removed the hot air, it felt like the table I was laying on started to spin. It started slowly at first, but then it got to be a stronger sensation once we got to the letter E or somewhere around there. Weird, huh? I wonder how people who usually have issues with motion sickness would do with that test.
Then we moved on to the right ear after a minute or two of recovery time. 50 seconds of warm air, and then I had to name boy names while feeling dizzy for a bit. Aaron, Bob, Charlie, David, Erik, Frank, etc. Next up: cold air in the left ear for 50 seconds followed by another focus activity. Name a city or state that starts with the letter A.....Alabama, Bismarck, Chicago, Denver, E.......ummmm.....East Fargo, Fargo, Grand Rapids, H...........ummmmm......here's a hint - it's an island in the Pacific.....oh yeah, Hawaii...... I may have been feeling a little bit dizzy when I got to E. :-) Last but not least......cold air in the right ear. In this case I felt less like the room was spinning and more like the table was moving up and down like I was on a boat, but there was still some spinning sensation too. This time I named animals. Aardvark, Billy goat, Crocodile, Dog, Elephant, Fox, Goat, etc.
For the final test, Alissa had me put on these goggles that had bright lights
inside, and the viewing window was such that I couldn't really see out
of them, but from the outside it makes your eyes really big. Then she
turned my head quickly and had me lay down quickly. Apparently some
people have positional vertigo, and it makes their eyes go crazy when
they do that kind of movement. I did not have that issue thankfully.
So......that was it. Quite interesting, huh?
