Tag Archives: activation

Looking at each sound within the entire mosaic.

30 Monday Dec 2013

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It’s been a while since I’ve last written and much has unfolded in my auditory world. As part of training my ear and brain to learn and recognize new sounds, I am to go to the audiologist every four weeks and receive an updated set of four incremental programs.

Each new program opens up the range of sound available to me a little at a time and this is so that my brain is not overwhelmed and therefore can adequately and somewhat calmly absorb this new world of pitch/frequency/vibration. Every seven or eight days, I increment up to the next program and I spend the week navigating that program.

To date, I’ve worked my way to the third increment within the third set of programs and I can see and feel a major difference from the very first day of initial activation -I must admit I feel like an android when I use this word but it’s industry standard and heck, there IS a wire peeking out from my hair so I might as well embrace the term whole-heartedly.

I’m now hearing more parts of sound. Because I was born with a high-frequency loss, my brain has no idea what high frequency sounds look like and therefore, this has been the most daunting part of the process. Every program has given me more access to high-frequency sounds and while it’s been amazing in its own capacity, I’ve felt so overwhelmed with the myriad of high notes out there.

What is overwhelming about this is that the sound fills my head.  I actually feel the sound. The experience of “hearing” has taken on a new dimension to me.  My eyes feel the vibrations. The space behind my forehead feels the sound and that rolls back into the inside of my head.

Silverware clattering into the drawer organizer, water turned on full blast into the kitchen sink, notebooks slapping the conference table at the beginning of a meeting, sirens of emergency vehicles a few blocks away, piles and piles of leaves rustling, clinking of glassware, brakes grinding as the subway comes to a standstill, the alarm on the exit gate that everyone uses when rushing to get out of the subway station, the ironing board screeching as it is opened and closed, even the tinkling of my own pee.  I feel the sound of my own pee inside of my eyeballs and my head.

As much as I’m enthralled with all of these brand-new mini ear experiences, at times it becomes too much.  I told Lisa, my partner that I don’t know how hearing people do it.  How do you filter out or water down the power of all of that….noise?!  On the days that I increment up to the next program, I go to bed exhausted that night. I’m crabby, irritable and I basically feel assaulted and worn out.

And then I wake up the next day, slap the magnet on along with ear piece, turn it on and it feels a little better.  Not as overwhelming. Not too unlike beginning a new work-out course and making through to your third class without wanting to chuck your water bottle at the obnoxiously perky & energetic instructor.

What I’m learning, though, through this process is that it feels more digestible to look more closely and isolate the unique sounds I’m picking up.  When I focus on the specific sounds and have a conversation with myself about what they are, I feel as though my brain catalogues the sound more rapidly.  Often on the subway ride to work in the mornings because I’m fresh and rested, I’ll take the opportunity to turn the hearing aid off in my right ear and I’ll ride with my eyes closed, listening hard. The sound of the bell tone as the train doors open. The automated voices listing the available transfers. The grind of the brakes.  The pull of the tracks as we careen around a bend.  I recognize the familiar sounds of a typical train ride and interestingly enough, I feel safe in this experience. It’s consistent.  My brain knows what to do with this particular mosaic of sounds.

It’s within the context of consistency that I’m able to then experience unusual sounds and to pick them out. On a train ride, I heard a sharp crack and turned my head to see a dropped smart phone had landed on the floor. I smiled fiendishly as I recognized that my brain was able to isolate that sound until I caught the look of dismay aimed my way by the owner of the phone. I didn’t feel that it would be fruitful to pick my way over to her and attempt to explain that I was ecstatic at hearing her phone hit the hard surface and why. She was clearly having a Monday morning.

Walking to work, I grinned happily at some poor unsuspecting fellow who sneezed right next to the magnet microphone attached to my head and I automatically replied, “Bless you!”  I can only imagine what he thought of the overzealous smile right in his face as he turned to me.  The light changed to “Walk” and I moseyed off.  I heard him sneeze!

I had an ethereal experience in the forest a few weekends ago when my friend and I went on a day hike at Storm King Mountain.  Hiking over rocks, streams and hills, I became so enamored with the isolated sound of leaves rustling past my boots that I found myself perched on a rock, staring down at all of the fallen foliage around me.  Every single step I took made my head spin. Almost stimming like a person with autism, I started shuffling slowly -experimenting with my heady ear hallucinations. When I looked up, I found that my fellow hikers were piling up behind me, staring at me oddly and all I could do was shrug and take off again, maintaining focus on pace. Which brings me to a conclusive point.

As I move onto new programs and wider ranges of sound become available, maintaining focus and continuing dialogue with my brain will be what helps me to grow comfortable with these sounds -eventually learning to filter them appropriately into a larger picture -or a mosaic.

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A skateboarder’s herbacious high and a CI moment

04 Monday Nov 2013

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It’s week three of being activated and so far, it’s been …interesting. I want to tell you that I love it. I want to say that it’s been one auditory revelation after another and that I’m jumping up and down because the quality of my hearing has skyrocketed.

In all fairness, I can’t do that. This whole experience is not any of those things. It’s not firework explosions and crystal clarity that I’ve never experienced before. It’s not me picking up the telephone and having conversations with college girlfriends or family without a translator nestled somewhere in between. It’s not me putting on music and smiling along with the lyrics that I’ve never understood before.

No. It’s none of that. What it is…is frustrating. It’s downright grueling work. And frankly, if I’m to be very open and honest about it, I don’t like it right now. I don’t regret it but  I’m struggling with it. I’m having conversations with myself about how I knew this would be hard work. That it’s not what I expected but if I’m to fully benefit from what this whole cochlear implant procedure and process truly is, then I will need to surrender over and over again. And I don’t like it. Patience is not my virtue.

For the last two weeks, I’ve been exhausted. I fall into bed around 8:30 every night with a steady tone ringing in my implanted ear. The tone begins around 4 or 5pm every night and goes away by the time I wake up. The tone is from the nerves being overstimulated. While I haven’t experienced headaches, I do feel a deep tiredness like my brain was doing calculations all day long with an accountant while trying to also write a thesis paper for physics -two subjects I know nothing about. That kind of tired.

I can tell you what all of this is, though. Right now it’s dozens and dozens of little CI moments. Some strung together like homemade Christmas popcorn garlands, one after another. Others singular and quite momentous in themselves.

From the day of activation up until now and for the next few months, I’m experiencing what I can best describe as tap dancing on my auditory nerves. I don’t feel like I’m hearing sounds. I feel like there are little tiny people inside my head with tiny little hammers and they’re tapping away at my under-exposed nerves. Tap, tap, tap, tinkle. Tappity-tappity tap…ping!

All of this tapping serves a purpose, though. As weird as I feel, I can already see the progress of these taps, tinkles and pings. The under-exposed nerves have never heard sound before. Ever. Because of that, the programs that I’m working with are designed to slowly increment the range of sounds that are allowed in, giving the infantilized nerves time to wake up, get acquainted and become active participants in receiving and processing sound.

I’ve already worked through a set of four programs -each active for 3 days. Now I’m working my way through a second set of four programs given to me by my audiologist. These programs last for a week each. Today I’m on the second. And I feel high. Not uncomfortably so but I do feel like I ingested something and everything is a wee bit illuminated.

I wear a BTE (behind the ear) hearing aid in my right ear that affords me very little  residual hearing. Right now that residual hearing feels like it’s been touched with sprinkles of heightened color and glitter. I can read lips so much better. Sounds feel prettier. I’m experiencing less difficulty understanding conversations in front of me, especially when I sit back and allow myself to relax.

Last week I was out walking the dogs and enjoying some gorgeous Fall weather when suddenly I heard/felt a rumbling sound. The dogs jumped and I turned around to see a young man on a skateboard roll up to us. He jumped off and with a broad, lopsided smile asked if he could pet the dogs. I happily obliged and as he was kneeling over rubbing the their heads, we chatted about his own experiences with dogs. He was talking a mile a minute and I stood there, listening, smiling and nodding. I was smiling not at what he had to say but at the realization that I could understand almost every thing he was saying…and this was a stranger.

He chattered at me for a good five minutes, growing more and more animated and my grin grew wider and wider -gleeful that I could take all of this in! Suddenly, he stopped rambling and said, ‘Okay! Thanks! See you around!” and he was off, leaving behind a faint whiff of the cannabis. It hit me that he was having his own little special moment while I was having mine.

Two days later, I incremented to another program and on that very day, I attended a conference/panel discussion. Normally such events would be a battle for me. Missing out on approximately 50% of what is actually said, I attempt fill in the blanks to make sense of the subject matter. This time, I didn’t have to. My colleague and I sat up front where we had a clear view of all of the panel participants. I was able to lean back, read lips and with the help of an excellent sound system, I heard almost all of it. I was overjoyed! I found myself truly absorbing the information, understanding what was being discussed and I even felt confident enough to raise my hand and offer my own input -over and over again. This was an enormous CI moment for me.

Granted, the aforementioned event was within a controlled environment, with each person taking turns to speak and to speak clearly so that everyone could hear. Even so, this was an event of over 50 participants. That’s huge for me. I smiled for three days -even as I slept hard for three days as well because it was still indeed exhausting work.

I can now hear the swishing sound that my belt makes when I pull it through my jeans loops. I can hear the dog’s nails tapping on the hardwood floors as he trots to his food bowl. Can’t hear the cat yet but definitely the dog.  I can hear the clink of the spatula hitting the pan when making dinner. I can hear myself pee. I can hear that woman in high heels clicking across our open-air office’s cement floors.  I can hear my boss walking up behind my desk. The radiator as it gurgles to life.

The best is the yellow Fall leaves in our back yard. I can hear the leaves crunching under my shoes as I wade through them. It is absolutely moments like these that I’m hanging on to when I feel overloaded and discouraged.