Tuesday, April 25, 2006

it is truly Spring

I had a turnaround with my CI and got to enjoy the weekend more deeply with it. The mix of sounds and voices are making some sense to me. I was at the beach and downtown all day on Sunday and am feeling increasingly connected to the world thorough sound. While at the beach I heard the ocean waves lapping on the shore and it was soothing and almost musical to me. I heard at least three different bird sounds and that astonished me. I need to learn what kinds of birds make what sound!

Since the turn-on of the CI, this is my first week back to work full time. The energy is returning as I had some adjustments to my processor to lessen the stimulation that was causing me extreme exhaustion. I am working most days this week with the families as well as with my regular job at the preschool. I look forward to hearing all the different voices in different environments. A sense of delight grew inside me while I worked with a woman who has an accent I found difficult to hear. I didn't have to ask her to repeat herself as much because I could make out most of her words! It is truly a miracle.

What a beautiful and unexpected start to my day. As I am writing this, my daughter's alarm went off in the next room and I can hear it from the office! I have not been as quick to put on the CI in the mornings because I find it a deafening start. Not today. I am on my way with more balanced sound.

I think often of my late father and his words when I was a little girl, "One day you will be able to hear...." (Bless you, Dad.) Mom left here for her homestead on Saturday morning after being with me for more than two weeks. Thank you Mom for everything. I am glad you were able to be a part of this monumental time.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

toaster vs doorbell

What a ride it has been for these last two weeks of re-activation. There is so much sound to hear and learn all over again. I experience quite a bit of fatigue as I go through the day hearing and listening! The level of fatigue I deal with is probably the part that is most unexpected to me and I realize it will pass once the body and mind gets used to the electronic stimulation. The doctor says it will take a month. I had a very good and alert kind of day on Easter Sunday and crashed by 8pm that night. I have been recovering ever since... I was grateful for the steady stream of energy that day and it gave me a sense of being my old self again. The CI is overwhelming, confusing, and somewhat beautiful all at the same time. It requires alot of perserverance to sort the sounds out. I deal with static noise in my head and the audiologist tells me its my brain sorting out the sounds. As sounds become more clearer, the static lessens.

I now realize that I have a toaster oven that makes a 'ding' sound when the toast is ready. With the hearing aid, and IF I was standing next to it, I would hear a click. No longer do the girls have to tell me the toast is ready as I can hear the toaster ding from another room! I don't hear the doorbell, just yet. This is so odd to me as I've had no problem with doorbells before. Again the CI team insist the sound will come. This is the irony. I am alerted to the door and instead it is the toast thats ready! I have learned to decipher the difference - according to memory the doorbell should do a 'ding dong' and the toaster only does a single 'ding.'

Then there was the day I heard the beat to music and no one else did, except Kirsti who had the earplugs attached to the MP3 player playing, and she was many feet away. Mom was bewildered with me as I insisted the music was playing in the house.

I am very lucky to have my mother here. She is so much help in every way I could write a page about her tremendous support. She is the one that keeps people from lining up at the door wondering why I won't answer. She tells me, "its the doorbell." She is also there to eat the extra toast while I test just how bionic my ears are.

Saturday, April 08, 2006

very proud and happy

Yesterday I had some fine tuning on three programs that were downloaded into the processor. By the end of the day I had a fourth program installed and I am to spend the weekend exploring the programs to see what makes the most sense in sound for me. They each have different speeds in pulses per second (250, 500, 900 and 1200 pps). We found during the programming, with the faster pulses per second (1200), I was experiencing facial twitches on the side of my face. Some electrodes affecting my face were either taken off the map or lowered in volume. There is an expectation I won't do as well with the faster speeds, but it doesn't mean I am being deprived of quality in sound. Different pulse rates work differently for everyone. However, if I do favor this faster map, it means the audiologist may not have as much flexibility to work with it because of the facial twitching. In other words the slower maps may provide more flexibility and opportunity for fine tuning. Yesterday morning I was hooked back up to the computer and Lisa, another audiologist on the team, worked away at more programming and asked tons of questions. This is good speech practice as I have to come up with a correct answer or the outcome of my mapping is affected if I give poor feedback!

At lunchtime, Mom, Di and I were craving protein and we devoured hamburgers at Vera's, a hot spot on Davie street. I returned back to the hospital with more mental clarity. Another CI team member, audiologist Cindy, suggested we try some word recognition tests. My immediate thought was there was NO WAY I would do well - I'd announced first thing in the morning that I had zero sense of speech recognition even though I was making sense of some environmental sounds. (A vehicle engine, for instance). Well, the testing turned out to be the highlight of the day. Even though these were simple tests with slow speech in a quiet room, I was doing very well in speech understanding in the beginning levels (and jumping excitedly here) without lipreading! I didn't think to ask her how many levels there are in these Speech Recognition tests, it doesn't matter, I was just so excited at the outcome. I missed one word -I just don't hear the word "coughdrop" - it sounds like "Kah-traph." At any rate it was a most encouraging session and Cindy discussed how we can improve communication in order for me to develop better speech understanding. Apparently the CI receives sound best when speakers are directly in front of me. It's not unlike how people have been speaking to me.

I came home with two audio books from the audiology library to practice with and they were lots of fun for me. A new hobby for me, listening to books. I also listened to a few familiar musical artists and was able to follow the lyrics. All this on my second day of activation. Charles Dickens sums it up perfectly for me:

Thursday, April 06, 2006

the second time around...

I really appreciate everyone who has contacted me and my family in the last 48 hours. I received thoughtful hopes and well wishes as I entered my first day of re-activation. It was a very good day. Daughter Lauren came with our group to watch the audiologist set up the CI. The audiologist and I had an intense six hour day working with the programming of the processor. I was hooked up to the hard drive while he fiddled around with the programming and asked many questions about what I was hearing. The sounds I heard consisted mostly of hearing a range of frequency sound in beeps and finding thresholds for comfort and quiet. As this took all day, we also had a break of lunch and coffee. During those times, I had an opportunity to explore the world outside. I chose to be attentive and quiet. I do not like hearing myself talk because it sounds so full of bass. Voices are difficult to understand right now. I hear environmental sounds and inquire what they are, but I also need to be led to sounds that come into my space. My family seems to know when to guide me and show patience when I ask what I'm hearing. I have been feeling overwhelmed through out the whole process and am now physically exhausted. My spirits are good, everyone is happy, and the audiologist is especially content with the outcome and feels that I should do very well.

Today was alot different from my original activation day, so we had champagne tonight to celebrate! We go back tomorrow for more fine tuning.