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~ A Cochlear Implant Journey

Adventures With Sound

Tag Archives: hard-of-hearing

Meat-lovers & dog kicking

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by Sara in Uncategorized

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Tags

conversation, hard-of-hearing, lip-reading, patience, sign language, sounds

Last week while walking back to work from lunch with a colleague, I kicked a small dog. Hard. The owner shot daggers at me and of course, I was horrified. I apologized profusely but I was still pierced by the withering glare of the pup’s daddy.

It happened while we were walking along a typical New York sidewalk up 8th Avenue in Chelsea -not too wide and relatively crowded with other hurried pedestrians. I was intently reading Sarah’s lips and trying to keep up with our conversation concerning a business project -all the while navigating what I couldn’t see in front of me because my eyes and head were turned toward her face. Sideswiped someone’s grocery bag but not so much that they dropped it. Near-missed a wheel-chair ramp railing exiting a building -only mildly dinging my right hip against the metal pole. Almost stepped off a curb into direct traffic. And then on complete accident, I kicked the pooch that had magically landed in front of me just outside of my lip-reading periphery.

Let’s talk about lip reading. More importantly, the experience of relying on lip-reading. In my 38 years of living as a hard-of-hearing person, one comment I receive the most is how “amazing it is that I can read lips so well” and it’s usually followed by garden-variety comment such as “you could be a spy” or “what am I saying?” and that sometimes leads to the obligatory game of repeating back silently mouthed phrases.

“What’s my name?”

“Can you read my lips?”

“What am I saying?”

“This…is…so….cool.”

After the fun little game is completed, I debate whether it wouldn’t be inappropriate to hand over a t-shirt that says “I’m certified.”

Another droll routine occasionally occurs when I meet any random stranger and we have a conversation. Often times, at some point in the initial conversation I may have to explain that I am hard-of-hearing and that I need for that person to stop playing with their moustache or to remove his or her hand away from his/her mouth so that I can have full view of the two lips that are forming the words.

This is where the circus act comes in. When said person fully comprehends that I am indeed reading their lips, they do the worst possible thing. They start to articulate. And by articulate, I mean go into extreme slo-mo with wild, almost unnatural gelationous mouth movements. I suddenly think of Jim Carrey performing some obnoxious scene and it becomes very difficult for me to maintain a straight face -much less understand what is being said. Some will even offer some strangled form of hand-gestures that are supposed to pass for sign-language. And I don’t even know sign-language.

I gently explain that I don’t need for them to…ahem…articulate. After all, I was “reading” just fine moments ago. All that was needed was for that particular visual obstacle -such as a hand or a piece of masticated debris to be removed. Yet the eyes go wide and the extraordinary articulation continues. And the hand gestures don’t quite go….away.  It’s in these particular cases that I want to hand the winning person a t-shirt that reads, “I”m certifiable.”

Lip-reading a large group can be likened to watching a hyper game of table tennis -with more than two players and more than two sides of a table. One of the challenges of effective group lip-reading is to find the person is talking among the bunch. This can be quite taxing in a larger group -especially when sitting around a square or rectangular table. So the trick is to settle your sights on one or two people who appear to be doing most of the talking and in the meantime fill in the blanks yourself so that you can remain an  active part of the conversation -or at least have your contributions maintain some relevance to the current subject matter.

That trick, though, has a few caveats.  At the very same lunch mentioned above, another classic lip-reading moment occurred. As it was a Friday afternoon that we went for our meal, we were all talking about our plans for the upcoming weekend. I asked a co-worker directly across from me if she was planning to go to visit her boyfriend in Pennsylvania.  She replied yes and the conversation eventually led to the pro’s and con’s of living outside of the city -meaning NYC.  More space, less people to deal with, less noise, cheaper housing….and so on.

I explained that we have two dogs and that we were lucky because we have a backyard, which is unheard of in Manhattan but we did not have a car. She mentioned that her boyfriend had what I thought she said a dog. I asked her what kind and she replied, “a Mercedes”.  My brain automatically started to try to picture what a “mercedes dog” looked like. Troubled, I asked her how big it was.

She looked at me and said, “um…not that big”.  I told her I had never heard of a mercedes dog and what did it look like? Her eyes went wide and she looked at me for a brief ten seconds. Suddenly, it clicked. She smiled and said, “He has a CAR.” Oh!  A car.  (shit.) We both snickered for a few moments and the conversation went on.

“Car”, “dog”. That makes sense. One syllable words with vowels that look the same in a darkened Mexican restaurant where the margaritas are flowing.

Moments later, I swung my eyes to another co-worker -employing the same trick of watching a person who is a lively participant to get a sense of where the general conversation was at.  Someone asked her who she was going to an event with and she coyly replied, “My lover” but because I was not used to that type of reference and I knew that she had a boyfriend with whom she lived, I thought she said, “Meat lover”. I smiled at her and told her that I thought that was cute that she called her boyfriend “Meat lover”.

She and I gazed at each other silently. I ran through the possibilities in my head… “Meat Lover. Why she she call him ‘meat-lover’? What does that mean? Is it a pervy reference of some sort? Is it really that he just loves his meat? What kind of meat, exactly? Or wait, is he an extreme vegetarian?” My imagination went straight down and through the rabbit hole. Her eyebrows went up, she smiled wanly, pointed to herself and said, “My lover.” We both started laughing so hard because oddly enough, even though it was not what she originally said, “meat lover” still made sense.

Lip-reading has been a life-saver for me. I’m able to participate in a mainstream lifestyle with very little additional aid and for that, I’m grateful. But make no mistake,  lip-reading absolutely has its hazards. Meter maid poles, fire hydrants, uneven sidewalks, car bumpers, scaffolding towers, conversational disconnects that lead to wild goose chases, misinformation and the maiming of small animals.

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The Plunge

01 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Sara in Uncategorized

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Tags

cochlear implant, Deaf, hard-of-hearing, lip-reading, sign language

Last Thursday, I underwent surgery to receive a cochlear implant in my left ear. It’s a little less than a week later and  I’m finally at a place in this dizziness where I can sit and write for a bit. My left ear is healing up nicely but the dizziness is from the inner ear still healing. It’s not too bad, though.

Yes, I did it. whew! Looking back, I’m thinking about how this whole process began.

It all kind of happened quickly once I started the process of consulting with the doctor, checking if insurance would cover it, etc.   I had looked into it very, very briefly years ago and it seemed too iffy back then and I also felt like there was too much controversy surrounding the whole topic.

Around that time a film called”The Sound and the  Fury” had come out. The film followed and highlighted the experiences of two related families -both with one or more deaf members. Both families were exploring the option of a cochlear implant and the film makers interviewed several of the individual family members extensively as they went through the exploration process. A highly charged film, I remember feeling dismayed by it all.  I could not relate. Even though I am not and never have been an active part of the Deaf culture, it bothered me that there was such strong sentiments about the procedure.

Before that, during my freshman year at Purdue, my roommate Amy and I took a American Sign Language course to fulfill our foreign language credit.  Our sign-language class was a group of about 20 students, all eager to learn more about the language and Deaf culture.  What I wasn’t prepared for was how negatively the professor  described the cochlear implant process. He likened the surgery to a chain saw used to disembowel the anatomy of an ear. I asked him why he was presenting the information in such a negative light and his response was that it was an unnatural surgery and that it was damaging to the Deaf community.  Many of my classmates were rapt with attention, taking his word as truth while I was seething with anger.  Needless to say, I got a C in that class.

Over time, life happened and I eventually let the idea of a cochlear implant go.  Also, over time, I felt like I was getting more frustrated with my hearing. I’m in a corporate setting for work these days -meetings, conference calls, multi-person conversations, etc. I come home exhausted and feeling basically wiped out…by Friday evenings, I’m a zombie. While I know that this is normal for a person who is almost profoundly deaf and relies almost completely on lip-reading, facial expressions and conversational cues from others, it still frustrated me that it felt like there was more that I could do.

One day my partner Lisa came home from her job consulting as a compliance officer. Part of her work was to research and line up pertinent information as related to the institutions that the bank did business with. One of them was the parent company of Advanced Bionics -a leader in cochlear implants.  As she further investigated the company, she was blown away by how much they’ve done already and how much they continue to put into their research and development.

She asked me if I had put any more consideration into getting a cochlear implant and if we could look into it. I balked at first, thinking it was super expensive and not very realistic to expect results much beyond what I hear now, which is very little.  She encouraged to me to at least keep an open mind and to explore the option.

At around the same time, I was in touch with another deaf friend that I met in San Francisco, CA. Betsy had one ear implanted almost 5 years ago and she was continuously amazed at how much it improved her life and her relationships in general.  She explained that she continues to learn more sounds over time and that it gets better and better.

So I looked into it. Checked out my insurance coverage to see what the damage would be. Turns out that it would be completely covered as long as my surgeon/doctor was in-network.  Wow. Okay. So I went ahead and made an appointment with an ENT (ear/nose/throat) surgeon -Dr. Neil Sperling here in Manhattan.

We spoke for 15 minutes and he pretty much summed it up for me…I was a candidate for this surgery. I was to go ahead and make an appointment with an audiologist at the New York Eye and Ear Institute.

I remember thinking to myself on the way to my audiogram appointment, “Wow, this is really happening. I’m checking this out! I met with the audiologist, Sabrina – a sprite of a woman who exuded a kind but serious and intelligent manner.  She parked me in a soundproof booth and after the test was over, we discussed what I already knew..I have a severe-to-profound hearing loss.

She asked me if I had any initial questions about the cochlear implant and I replied that I had hundreds of questions but I couldn’t think of any at that moment.  I didn’t even know where to start.  She explained that the next step was to read through the materials provided by the three cochlear implant options -Cochlear, Advanced Bionics and MedEl and then come back to discuss all of the information about the implant technology with her.

Armed with three folders, I pored over all three. Chart after chart promised success rates with various sounds. Drawings illustrated how the implants rested in your head. Pictures showed different people doing different things -a child and an adult both swimming, several business people sitting around a conference table, a couple smiling and snuggling on a couch in front a of a television.

I began to feel like I was being inundated with a lot of superficial information that made the whole process seem a simple matter of making a choice and purchasing a box, bringing it home and assembling according to directions. Too simple.  I was a little freaked.

I made another appointment with the audiologist. Lisa took the morning off and came with me on this visit. Together, we met with the audiologist to go over all of the technical aspects of each brand. It was a very illuminating visit and it set my nerves at ease.  I felt even more excited about it all -especially when we discussed music. It is very likely that I will be able to experience a more comprehensive music understanding with the help of fine-tuned programming of the processor.

Two weeks later, I met again with Dr. Sperling and we set the ball rolling. He reviewed the audiograms from Sabrina’s offices reiterated that he believed I would benefit greatly an implant. He pointed out that my current speech was excellent and that I would do even better after. He also said that he believed I would be knocking at his door less than 3 months later asking for the second ear to be done. I met with his admin staff and we went through the necessary insurance info exchange and set a date. September 26, 2013.

A physical, set of shots and an CT scan later, clearance was given and I was ready.  I was to show up at The New York Eye and Ear Infirmary on 14th street at 9 AM and I couldn’t have a damn cup of coffee -or anything else for that matter 12 hours prior.

The last thing I remember is the surgical team all stepping forward to greet me when I entered the operating room. Ironically, they had to lower their masks so that I could read their lips.  🙂

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