I returned to work for the first time since my cochlear implant surgery. The sounds on the subway train sound the same, except for the public service announcements. I can't understand the PA announcements yet. To my delight, it was a "quiet" day at work. A lot of my office co-workers are on official travel for a training conference until next Monday. I can hear people walking back and forth in the corridor outside my office door. I can hear people walking around the corridor when I can't see them, thus avoiding any near "people collisions."
I am still relying on lipreading as well as listening to people's voices. The clarity of speech is getting better, depending on who I talk to. The huge difference is that I am not exhausted after a day of "listening" and "lipreading." Don't get me wrong. I am tired after my first day back at work, but I don't feel absolutely wiped out. In hearing with a cochlear implant, lipreading is an added benefit. Thank God for all that relentless auditory training and rhythm classes. If you don't use what residual hearing you have, you lose it. That's my theory.
The sounds of traffic are sounding more "normal," post activation. I now see the wisdom of not wearing a BTE hearing aid in the non-implanted ear, and wearing the sound processor over the implanted ear constantly. You can't really get the full benefit from a cochlear implant by "practicing" for a few hours with a sound processor after implantation, and then taking it off or whatever. You don't do that with glasses, or you shouldn't. Otherwise that is a wasted prescription for glasses as well as a waste of your money. Contact lenses do take some time getting used to.
Music is still a challenge to me. On the way home, while driving in city traffic, I decided to "tweak" the radio in my car to see if the tweaking helped my listening experience. Until now, music was still noise. I did. I tweaked the treble, bass, and fade controls. Then I put on a Sheryl Crow CD. AHA!! I could hear the singing and recognized the singing as that of Sheryl Crow, but didn't understand the lyrics as of yet. I got the rhythm. I could identify the various instruments on the CD.
I could "tweak" the radio so I could enjoy what my ear perceives as music and enjoy it, after 19 days of being "activated." See, my hearing friends would "tweak" my car radio and stereo receiver at home for me. They would tweak and fiddle until the radio or stereo receiver sounded "normal" to me when I was wearing hearing aids. Whoo Hoo! I'm on a roll here!
Years later, I now understand how my father, could have trouble understanding a conversation at the dinner table, but yet have hearing so acute that he could hear the "rickety tick-tick" of our black Labrador retriever's toenails across the kitchen no-wax tile floor, and hear the roll of toilet paper going in a downstairs bathroom. This is a true story. My dad was a veteran of Korea and Vietnam, a career Army Officer, and had been exposed to the constant barrage of artillery fire. I had my own bedroom downstairs with a private bath in our house. One night I got up in the middle of the night to pee and was startled by feeling the vibration of my father pounding on the bathroom door. Here I was, sitting on the toilet and wiping myself when the banging started. I got up, opened the door, and was quite startled by my father, in his underwear, holding a rifle in his hands (unloaded, but I didn't know that). Why I didn't scream, I am not sure.
My mother, of course, was sound asleep upstairs. She would literally sleep the sleep of the dead. I am not kidding. A fire engine could roar through their bedroom and Mom would sleep right through it. My father was the one who was the light sleeper of the two.
He said that he heard a noise and said Mindy, it is two o'clock in the morning, and wanted to know what I was doing. I was really rattled at seeing the rifle, and said, "Daddy, I was on the toilet, I had to go to the bathroom, and what you heard was me using the toilet, and then the roll of toilet paper rolling."! He said oh, and said well, go back to bed. It took me a good while to go back to sleep!
I couldn't understand until now, why my father could pick out and hear certain sounds, but yet have trouble with speech discrimination. Another "Aha"! moment. He is probably on a cloud somewhere in Heaven just laughing at the irony of my whole cochlear implant experience to date. I don't mean laughing at me to be mean, but rather laughing as if to say, "Now you get it"! My mother is probably sitting right beside him on that cloud, shaking her head at my father.
I grew up in a family that appreciates music. Being deaf, I learned to appreciate music during deaf school days by placing my hand to feel the vibration of the grand piano. Tonight I found myself reverting back to that "feeling" behavior when listening to the Sheryl Crow CD. I placed my left hand on the left armrest at a red traffic light to "feel" the rhythm as well as "hear" the music.
I could take the sound processor off, sit on the floor, place the small of my back against a speaker and "listen" to rock music that way and "understand" the music just fine. At rock concerts, my hearing friends knew to lip sync the lyrics for me. In case you are wondering, I didn't wear the hearing aids at the rock concerts. The music was loud enough WITHOUT the hearing aids. Again, I didn't go to that many concerts, either.
Appreciating music with a cochlear implant to its fullest is taking time. That's okay, too. My friends, family and I have to unlearn a lot of deaf habits! I already have assigned myself "homework." I'm going to listen to the singing on the CMA awards Wednesday night on TV.
One Hearing Day At A Time!
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