What is Hard (Versus What is Easy)

So easy sometimes to make some amount of progress and then realize how far you have to go. What is more, so thought-provoking sometimes to reflect on progress itself in terms of what is hard and what is easy.

Things are easy now that weren't before. In auditory therapy this past week, I got several strings of words as long as 11 or 12. And got them perfectly. My auditory memory was working overload and could barely regurgitate them before the whole string vanished entirely, but... 12 words?! That's a really big deal. The other day while riding I heard (and, more importantly, understood) my coach yell directions across the arena to another rider. I grasp full sentences over the PA more and more often at horse shows. It's easier to relax in daily situations with noise; no longer is it so jarring and strange.

Still, the moments of clarity notwithstanding, much of listening is still a matter of fighting for every scrap of information I get. It's pulling myself up a sheer rock face by my fingertips. It's teasing something small and slippery out of a hole it doesn't want to leave. And then I get my prize and, tired and a bit proud of myself, look around at the world around me and feel abashed. What I have just accomplished is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with what's possible with sound.

Really, the thing about hearing that makes me marvel is how, when it's working properly and all circuits are firing, it's all rather easy. This never struck me too much before the CI; listening and hearing was just something I didn't do, something I relegated to the realms of hearing people. I never considered how it works. Think about it. Sound waves compress, travel through the air, enter your head through two small holes, make a series of bones shift and membranes vibrate and nerve cells pulse - and then the brain calculates the frequencies and combines them and evaluates what they mean. And then you understand and respond within an instant. It's astounding. I watch my hearing peers and marvel at how easy everything is. How thoughtless. It feels beautiful, in a way. Picking up the phone while driving, or otherwise multitasking, and having a rapid-fire conversation with your mother. Navigating through overlapping voices, engaging in high-speed banter. Sitting in a noisy, dimly lit restaurant at a large table and speaking across to someone five seats away and somehow - I have no idea how - picking up on their voice shooting at you amidst the din. Isolating that voice and recognizing it and holding on to its coherence. There's a peculiar kind of intimacy about those kinds of daily exchanges. I've been watching such things lately and wondering, now that I have some vague sense of that facility of auditory access, what they would feel like for me. Honestly, it fills me with an unexpected feeling of wonder.

And then I think of myself, inching up my rock face. That sense of difficulty versus ease: the moments that it occurs to me are the moments that I feel farthest away from hearing-world immersion, because what is most arduous for me is most thoughtless for them. I want it to be easy, as easy as fitting together words and writing them on the page, and I know that it will never be. I want to know what easy feels like. Gliding in and out of sound and, most importantly, meaning. Dancing with the facility of words. This may be what I'm thinking of - and then I remind myself how many other things in my life are wonderfully, unbelievably, laughably easy. And then I stop and, indeed, have to laugh a little.

But because something is hard doesn't mean that it is less worthy of joy. It was hard, but I did it, versus It was easy, but I did it. In both cases, I'm left with simply, I did it. And that doing is enough, at whatever level it takes place. Here's to not taking our skills and actions for granted. And here's to "it" - listening, hearing, understanding, communicating - becoming easier and easier. :)

Backtrack

It’s funny that I wrote about destabilizing moments in my last post, because I had one – albeit of a very different sort – this past weekend. Like a total dunce, I forgot to recharge my ensemble of CI batteries on Friday night, and so woke up on Saturday to find that I had a quarter of the juice in each battery, but that was all. Thinking that I’d remember to swap out in the middle of the day before my BTE died completely, I set out.

Of course, lunch came and went without this resolution even crossing my mind, and in the early afternoon the thrum of noise shut off. I had just gotten on a horse five minutes earlier, and the sudden silence was startling. No more birds, no more gravel crunching underfoot, no more wind. Just a deadening hush. My first reaction, I now laugh to say, was of panic. How could I deal with this silence? For a whole ride? And then for the time period afterward until I could get back to my room to switch batteries, a good forty-five minutes in which I would have to walk around and function and – banish the thought – talk to people? I wanted my sound back!

I’ll be honest, I thought about dismounting right there and running for the woods. It was something of an irrational impulse, but then another voice spoke up in my mind. You did this for twenty years, it said. You rode for twenty years, you lived for twenty years, just like this. It was fine then, and it’ll be fine now. Oh, yeah. Who was I, of all people, to doubt my ability to function without sound? Had I changed that much?

Still, as I entered the arena and proceeded with my ride, I felt less confident than usual. I spent more time looking into the faces of the riders I passed, glancing over my shoulder to be sure I hadn’t missed anything. I worried that someone would yell after me, or that something unexpected would happen nearby, and I would not hear. I even felt disconnected from what I was doing because of how I floated along in silence, muffled noise from my hearing aid notwithstanding. In short, my sound-acclimatized brain was embracing some of the fears that lay hearing people have about deafness.

When I dismounted, I passed some people in the barn and found that I suddenly did not want to talk to them. It struck me how hard it was to understand based only on lipreading and this indistinct-hearing-aid muddle. I finished up quickly, and went to meet a friend before walking back to my room together. Talking with him, my head reeled. I had to squint my eyes and focus; no sound cues were there to help me out. When I spoke, my tongue seemed to slide around in my mouth. I suddenly did not have any auditory feedback to track how I was articulating my words, and the edges of my pronunciation seemed to soften and turn to mush. I do not know how to describe this sensation: I literally could not find my verbal footing. Without my CI, my confidence, my situational awareness, my conversational skills, even the way I talked all seemed to crumble. In my mind, I could imagine what the world ought to have sounded like, but without direct auditory stimulation those imaginings became irrelevant. During those two or so hours before I replaced the battery and everything was fine again, I felt swept out to sea.

I won’t expand on this experience any farther. It’s something I’ll have to reflect on. All I have to say is: wow. My brain certainly has rewired itself, and I am stronger for it. In ways I almost have not realized.

When the Ground Sways Beneath Your Feet

I stumbled across this video from Advanced Bionics today and thought I'd post it. It fits into the lines of what I've written on this blog before, but there's still no getting over how incredibly sophisticated this whole CI concept is. And the best part: it sounds great!



I've been having a lot of moments lately (okay, maybe all along) of surprising complexity, destabilizing moments where it seems like my brain, under the surface, is working on a new breakthrough. Or when it seems like the meaning of something is just within reach, although I can only brush it with my fingertips. It'll happen quite suddenly: I'll be walking and talking with a friend when I notice that the sound of her voice is different than before, that it's making me gasp with its smoothness and resonance, even if I can't say exactly how or why it's changed. I'll get distracted by its rich ebb and flow, like little green tendrils are starting to blossom beneath the previously barren surface of syllabic patterns. Those are delicate roots that don't funnel down very far right now, but I can almost physically feel them growing. So, in my mind I'll gasp and then realize that I'm not paying attention to what my friend is actually saying. Why would I, when her voice by itself sounds so wonderful and strange? Earth to Rachel. Hello there, lipreading.

Speaking of which, I still do lipread extensively - but, when it's quiet, I've been having more and more moments where I'll turn half away or not quite see the shape of a word on someone's lips. Instead of panicking, I'll feel my brain gently slide in and hand the phrase to me. Oh. Thanks. That wasn't a big deal. A lot of times it's only afterwards that I realize I wasn't seeing, but hearing. My auditory therapist commented on this the other day - I'm not asking for as much repetition with her as I did during the summer, I'm more confident and self-possessed and more active in the conversation. This is something I might not have noticed on my own, but the feedback is a great confidence boost. Upon further reflection, it's true. When I'm not fried from processing all this new information, I have more room inside my own head to think.

In those quiet situations, there is a constant give-and-take between sound and sight, the two of them uncertain allies (and sound, the newcomer, often shuffling into the corner feeling unwelcome) but gradually learning to work together. But in noise it's a different story. Then, sound will rush headlong into the path of chaos while sight pulls back, disgruntled, and attempts to restore proper balance to my brain. With more small noises entering my stream of consciousness from farther away, this tug o'war is something that will continue for a while. I've found that I have a very hard time taking exams now because of the shuffling, rustling, coughing, creaking noises going on through the hush, whereas before the CI I was always perfectly content in my mental bubble of silence. I stormed out of my room the other night wondering what the heck the ruckus in my house was, only to find three people having a table conversation (okay, a lively conversation, but still, only a conversation) three rooms and two closed doors away. Really? It was hard to be upset when I realized I'd actually heard that. And heard it so loudly. Sight keeps wanting to seize sound's head and bang it on the table (okay, the rest of my body does too - it's a collective mutiny) but sound keeps holding its own, becoming bolder than ever. And, of course, more useful.

All of this, to be honest, has set me on the path of considering a second CI. There are frequent moments now where I have to check to be sure my hearing aid is still working, that side of my head feels like such a dead zone. But that's something I'll write about another time.

Same Place, Same Sound - Or Is It?

Coming back to familiar places, you always notice that they do not feel quite the same. The reason, in most cases, is you: you've been away, you've changed, and you're returning with a different perspective. This has been true for me in many ways since coming back from three months in Europe - but perhaps the most striking difference about home is that it sounds different. It sounds better! Having a baseline to compare to, I'm reminded of just how much my hearing is progressing.

Take airports, for instance. From my many travels back and forth to California over the summer, I've come to associate airports and airplanes with tune-ups in hearing. At first, they almost made me physically ill. That first flight back from California, almost six months ago, is something I shudder to think about. A great shapeless blob of sound hovered over my head, roaring and pulsating, so that reading - concentrating - thinking - became impossible. But now, the thrum of activity, and even of the engine, is just there, keeping me company. Now I can hear the different sounds in that large roaring cacophony, from when the engine gears up to when the wheels screech as they land to the various footsteps and announcements and voices in the airport. Loud and clashing, yes, but more subtly so.

The same is true for my house: not only are its noises more tolerable, but they are more complex. The new whirs and clicks and noises I'm noticing have me confused, and I have to go through the whole process of racing around figuring out what they are. I'm hearing more noises from farther away, and I've found that when I'm sitting in one room I sometimes know exactly what's going on in another, just by listening. How strange and amazing. It feels almost like ESP. This is not the same house that I knew three months ago.

My first day home, I sat down at our piano and struck a note: middle C. It rang forth, smooth and so beautiful that I literally gasped. Same house, same piano, and three months later it sounds so wonderfully pure and resonant, so different from the almost mechanical notes I heard over the summer. My brain is starting to interpret music as, well - music.

In the yard, the chickens roam about, clucking and crowing. I recognize their noises instantly as chicken sounds. But here, too, something is different. I'm hearing them from way, way across the yard, and they sound more richly layered, more complex, more - I don't know - chickeny. I'm noticing more different tones and subtleties in their clucking, almost as if I can interpret their moods. Too bad this doesn't stop them from being annoying. I'm still apt to shout, "Shut up!" when one rooster gets his tailfeathers into too much of a wad.

Who knew one place could feel so different, so much richer, based on the quality of sound I find there? My ear is working on finer and finer auditory skills, and the amount of texture that gives the world is astounding. It's starting to be a little more than just "noise." Now I've just got to listen to some of the specific songs I heard over the summer, return to some of the same listening exercises, go to more familiar (but yet changed) places, and see where all that puts me!

Unexpected Insight From George Eliot

"At first when I enter a room where the walls are covered with frescoes, or with rare pictures, I feel a kind of awe - like a child present at great ceremonies where there are great robes and processions; I feel myself in the presence of some higher life than my own. But when I begin to examine the pictures one by one, the life goes out of them, or else is something violent and strange to me. It must be my own dulness. I am seeing so much all at once, and not understanding half of it. That always makes one feel stupid. It is painful to be told that anything is very fine and not to be able to feel that it is fine - something like being blind, while people talk of the sky."

- Dorothea Brooke, in George Eliot's Middlemarch

Rereading Middlemarch this weekend, the above quote seemed to pop out and slap me across the face. Though Dorothea here is speaking to Will Ladislaw about paintings and art, I realized that this is exactly the way I've felt about sound since the CI. The things I'm hearing are so numerous and overwhelming, and I have so little knowledge with which to make sense of them. When I try, they slip out of my fingers. My appreciation of sound derives mainly from a sense of being overawed, as one present at an unprecedented spectacle, not from a true educated subtlety. That subtlety will come with time, but as of now the things I hear are indeed "violent and strange." Yet what an ineffable, seductive strangeness it is.

Me, the Burglar

I've never been very good at being quiet. In fact, because I've never really been able to hear myself, my tendency is to be rather loud. Just ask my family: at home when getting out of bed at night and in the mornings, I stomp around, bang the doors, and slam the lid on the toilet, to the extent that my little sister can't stop giving me grief for disturbing her sleep. My loudness is a constant joke in our house. Before the CI, my bantering strategy was to jeer that I wasn't really that noisy, that I was trying to be quiet, that hearing people were too sensitive and should just suck it up, etc. In my own mind, I honestly did think I wasn't loud.

But that, well, was because... I couldn't hear it. These days, as I've written about, background noise persists in being a real problem for me, so that if a piece of paper so much as rustles in an otherwise quiet room I sometimes want to jump up and scream. Never mind doors closing and people stomping around in the hallways outside. Shudder. I haven't learned to tune - it - out. These days, also, my morning routine is different, characterized by an almost painfully charged awareness of sound. Now, I'm a morning person, something that's a bit odd for a college student, and if I sleep past 7am I feel as if an essential part of my day has been wasted. So, because I'm usually up before my roommate, I've gotten practice in sneaking around in the mornings. But quietly this time. Or at least, trying to be.

Now, being quiet (for a deaf person) is a funnier thing than you might think. And I've noticed a general pattern that has been surprising. Obviously, when I wake up I'm enveloped only in silence. I shower and dress hearing nothing but the rhythm of my own thoughts. At these times, it's easy to become lost in my own mind, and admittedly in old habits, so that sound (and my own noisiness) seems less important. Pooh, I'm not being that loud, am I? But the moment the CI goes on - wow. Roar. My perspective undergoes a 180-degree shift. I've been absorbed in my illusions of a still, quiet morning, but it turns out that even this dark room is pulsing with so much sound. Every movement I make seems amplified, and when I freeze I find that I am still making noise, just by breathing. My attempts at being quiet seem nearly futile, because everything makes noise. Nowhere, I find, can I approach the total silence that, without the CI, I know so well. There's no escaping it: sound exists, and goes on existing whether I am aware of it or not. This may seem simple, but it's a profound realization that keeps hitting me over the head, day after day. The only thing I can say: I really would make a very poor burglar.

Funny how we don't think about things when they're not directly influencing us. For me, without the CI it's perfectly easy to go about as if sound ceases to exist for everybody else, and not just me. Only when I receive that audible check, that reminder of the world outside my own mind, can I stop and think, oh yeah. Right. That hearing perspective still feels so quirky and unnatural.

Now if only volume control were available for everybody else - for me it's a lifesaver!

On Noises That Stimulate Wonder

Crunchy, crunchy leaves...

Contrary to my last post, not all sounds make me nuts - more often than not, it can be exhilarating to have my concentration disrupted, to have the world tug at my attention and insist that I perceive something, regardless of how small, in a wondrously different way. Of course, this has been happening all along with the CI, but here's the most recent chronicle.

This is my first fall of experiencing such vibrant, dynamic sound. Thus, when I walk outside, I find myself directly experiencing the things I've, until now, only read and heard about secondhand. Yes, I knew leaves crunched, and maybe I could hear that a teensy bit with my hearing aid - but then it was only a dull whisper, not like this. Not this crisp, crackly, amazing noise that so perfectly matches the chill edge in the air outside. I've taken to walking - no, stomping - through them whenever possible. Around me I can hear branches rustling, birds, other people talking as they pass, doors closing, occasional cars. When the breeze picks up, it is one of my favorite sounds, so soft and whistling and elusive. I feel like I could listen to it all day. There's a lot of cobblestone on the roads around here, and my most recent game is stepping from one surface to another, from smooth sidewalk to bumpy stone to cracked asphalt to gravel, and seeing how the sound changes. I shuffle my feet, tread lightly, stamp, vary my gait, and the fact that I hear something different each time is just... stunning.

Even while I'm inside, noises sneak up on me when I don't expect them. Last night, while reading for class with a pencil in hand, it suddenly struck me that each time the lead touched the page, I heard something. Even from way down in my lap. Scratch. Scratch. I was mystified at first, and then felt as if a light bulb had switched on - the scribble of a pencil! But of course! Suddenly jubilant, I scrambled to find a piece of scrap paper, then sat scribbling, scribbling, writing my name and other random words, scrawling out in cursive versus print, listening and grinning like a fool. It was only a pencil, but hearing it was like extending my reach even farther into a world I'd never really imagined. Other sounds keep making me feel the same way: the peel ripping off an orange or a banana, the constant rustle of clothes, the stir of my hair in its ponytail, the squeak of my hands on the glass or the china, the umbrella popping open. Each time the thrill of discovery is the same. It is this thrill that I love most about the CI, this sense of wonder that seems inexplicable (and maybe incompehensible) to anyone but myself.

How amazing, that the world has sounds like these! And how lucky I am, to be able to experience them!

On Noises That Ruin My Concentration

Oh, there's a noise over there? Really? Okay, let's look. Oh, another noise? Wait, that one was only the door closing, not that important. Thank you for being so attentive, but let's concentrate now... I said let's concentrate! Yes, I know something else just happened in the corner, but it's not important either - are you listening to me? I said, are you listening? Come back over here! No, I don't know what that noise was, but I don't care - stop! We have more important things to do! All right. Thank you. Sit down. We are reading this book right now, and - yes, I know someone just coughed. At least, I think it was a cough - no, we are not looking! We are focusing! Hey, come back and sit down!

This is the way my CI makes me feel in the library. After four months, the noises that most fascinate my brain are the small ones, the rustlings in the corners and the muttered conversations far away - just the noises that, unfortunately, most distract my studies.

I used to think libraries were quiet places. Wrong. In principle everyone is working to keep the silence, but that doesn't stop the constant influx of sudden noises: floorboards creaking, doors clicking shut, pages rustling, people coughing. Aaargh! How am I supposed to think like this? My brain becomes hyperalert, my thought processes shatter. Never, never has studying been like this. In desperation to shut out all the clutter, I'm driven to music - which in itself can be distracting. (The other day I sat staring out the window and listening to Ravel's "Bolero" for ten minutes before I realized I wasn't reading.)

Forget the library! I'll try other places instead. But, even in my room, the sounds of the house creep in. The heaters and pipes and fans, plus who knows what else. Last week I went nuts for several minutes before realizing that the voices I was hearing (which I'd been worried I was imagining) were in fact wafting up through a crack in my window from the patio outside. There, when I looked, two people were talking in normal voices twenty feet below. Wow, and I heard that?

Even in a public place like a bus or a train, my mind is not completely my own. It keeps cavorting off to investigate murmured conversation many feet away, or the sounds of people heaving sighs and shifting in their seats. I'm reminded, moment by moment, that I am not alone or in isolation, but surrounded by others who are as functioning and alive as me. That's reassuring, in a way. But... but I like cutting the world off sometimes and sitting inside my own mind!

Too bad. Everything that moves makes a sound. That's been the rule from day one. Now - focus, focus, focus!

The Sounds of the UK

In London, the frequent sound of police sirens. Oh yeah, this would be part of living in a big city. Soon I notice and recognize them even when tucked away inside a building, through several walls. Sometimes when walking down the street I hear them and stop and look, startled and somewhat enthralled by how they pierce my ears. The hearing people around me keep moving, their heads down. Hey, it's only sirens.

The screech of the metro (or "tube") rails, especially around corners. This sound makes me feel more nervous about being suspended on such narrow tracks, under the mass of earth that supports the roaring city above. I can hear the cars rattle. Click, click, click. It's the sound of my own motion, rushing headlong. At the stops, the sound of an oncoming train makes me squint down the tunnel's dark hole even before the headlight has rounded the turn into the station.

Walking beside the Thames river at morning - wait, what's that? It sounds like it's coming from above, sounds like a pulsing honking noise, unlike anything I've heard before. I stop, whirl around, and look. Nothing. But as soon as I've given up on the sound and continued on my way, a spectacular flock of geese, at least fifty of them, swoops right down on me and glides across the water, spreading their racket as they fly. Those birds making that noise? And I heard it from that far away? Wow!

On the same walk, an eight boat goes streaking past, the Oxford rowers pulling their oars in unison. And I hear them chanting from across the water, stroke by stroke. In. Out. I can't make out the words, but I stand and watch them, listening until the sound fades at several hundred yards. When other boats go by I can hear the cox's voice. Now I see what people mean when they say sound carries over water.

At dinner, someone proposes a toast. He clinks the wine glass right beside me and it is ringing, ringing, surprisingly bold and clear. All around the hall, people fall silent and turn to look. It's only a glass, and I would once have wondered how it could penetrate so many layers of conversation. But now it's clear to me why they're lookng; the sound literally fills the corners of the room.

In an old wood-paneled chapel, someone is upstairs playing the organ. The pipes are huge, stretching up to the vaulted Gothic-style ceiling, and the sound is slightly unearthly. Ringing, resonant, a bit disembodied. (In Paris, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, my sister said the organ sounded like an exorcist.) Again, the sound fills the room. I played the piano many times over the summer, but this instrument sounds like so much more.

The constant bells that fill the city of Oxford, especially when within hearing range of the many churches and cathedrals. Some deeper and clanging, others small and tinkling. But always bells, always tracking the time of the day. On that note, I am startled to hear the huge hands on the clocks ticking dozens of feet above, as I stand gazing up from the cobblestone street. It strikes me that I am hearing the rhythm of life going by.

And the tang of British accents, of course. More on that another time.

What's in a Word?

Really, by far people's favorite question to ask me is: "So. What did that sound like?"

Always this question - whenever there's a new sound in the environment, or whenever I come across a word that my ears find unfamiliar, or whenever my face looks slightly puzzled. (I guess I must look puzzled pretty often these days.) Oftentimes, I find myself casting out in vain for an adequate description. The sound quality of the CI is changing and improving all the time, but it's still not equivalent to what hearing people hear. What did that sound like? Ha, I don't know! Language fails me, especially since I have no previous experience to compare with. Depending on the situation, maybe it's:

Rough. Tweety. Mechanical. Cartoonish. Fuzzy. Damped. Squashed. Gravelly. Blaring. Blurred. Quacking. Flat. Crackling. Robotic. Squawky. Breathy. Cottony. Out of focus. Hissy. Murky. Distorted. Grating. Hollow. Muted. Roaring. Whispery. Screechy. Chirpy. Droning. Thin. Layered. Vibrating. Electronic. Chopped up. Warbling. Blunted. Dulled. Garbled. White noise.

So. What can a well-chosen adjective convey?

In Which Silence Makes an Unexpected Reappearance

An interesting thing happened today. While listening to Chopin’s Etude in G-flat major on my work computer, my CI battery died. Abruptly. Whatever the reason – that it didn’t charge correctly, that its life is diminishing with use – the result was silence. Total and uncompromising, where piano chords had rolled only an instant before.

My reaction was ironic – and, I soon found, amusing. Stupid, stupid battery! I was enjoying that song! Now I have to wait hours to hear again! Why couldn’t you wait until I had a spare? [Prod, shake, shake, shake, tap, frown.] Ha, I would never have felt this way several weeks ago, when all I wanted to do was tear the CI off.

What arose, this time, was a sudden feeling of being severed from part of my world. How dependent I’ve become on a battery and a bit of silicon. I still had my hearing aid in my right ear, of course, but it was comparatively useless. I sat at my desk, expecting to hear the sounds I’ve learned since the end of June, the sounds I’ve come to take for granted. They were not there. Or, they were still there somewhere, but not for me. What I could hear was muffled and diminished, rather than sharp and bold. My surroundings, besides what I could immediately see and touch, seemed detached. Even in my quiet office, I’ve grown used to hearing people walking down the hallway, the air conditioning humming, fax machines and printers whirring, phones ringing, vacuum cleaners roaring. The world living, moving, thrumming. Now, without sound, it was as if that world had retreated, leaving me sitting alone inside my own mind.

This, I thought, is the way it used to be. This was my reality. Amazing, just how much the CI has embedded itself into my experience and my expectations. Though silence is fine with me during intentionally solitary moments, I’ve come to crave sound. Anything less is disappointing.

And it’s only been two months!

Phone Home

“This won’t work,” I told my mother. “I’m not ready yet.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But might as well start practicing.”

This is crazy. I heard the door close, then a set of footsteps down the hall, leaving me alone in the room with the telephone. I stared mistrustfully at it. Despite seeing phones for my entire life, I still perceive them as strange objects that only hearing people talk on. Not me, certainly. The thought made me want to laugh. A few seconds – a noise penetrated the room. Yes, yes, the phone was ringing!

I let it ring again before picking it up, positioning it awkwardly by my ear. “Hello,” I said, half-expecting to hear nothing back – or, at the most, a mangled sound. To my surprise, I heard my mother's voice, tiny and squeaky as though inhaling helium at the far end of a tunnel, but unmistakably saying the words from our prearranged script.

“You sound like a duck,” I said, bemused. “I mean, like the duckiest duck I’ve ever heard. Hold on.”

Turning up my CI volume only helped the squeakiness a fraction, and made my own voice sound painfully loud, but at least I could follow what she was saying. We had a short, scripted conversation, then hung up. Then she called me again. Then we hung up again. After several rounds of this, I tried her cell phone, which sounded clearer than the landline – or maybe I was getting more used to phones in general? Another milestone, in any case!

I don’t know if I’ll ever properly talk on the phone, but it’s an exciting thought, and my recent progress makes it more conceivable than ever before. Although, still, the idea of picking up a receiver and instantly understanding the caller is nuts! It’s like believing that, one day, I will learn to fly. But I try not to set limitations on what I can and can’t do; after all, this is a new reality, isn’t it? I had my first-ever Skype conversation without sign a little while ago, letting the sound of my friend’s voice supplement my lipreading when the screen wasn’t too blurry. This would not have been possible with hearing aids, and logging off I felt exhilarated. Now if my listening comprehension progresses to the point where I’m not so reliant on lipreading (and hence not so vulnerable to the clarity of the video connection), I could be able to skype any friend I want, not only those who sign! My daily listening practice has progressed to more and more semi-open exercises, in which I know the general category of what someone will say, but not the exact words. The other day, I was able to have a passable conversation with my mother without any set defined at all. Although I had to ask her to repeat some phrases, I was able to understand others right away. My auditory memory is slowly beefing up. I’ve even listened to a song or two and followed the lyrics.

Still, my recent foray with the telephone makes me think of the role that other technologies have played in my life. No, I’ve never been able to use some everyday devices like the phone, but other innovations more than make up for that. Really, there’s never been a better time in history to be deaf. Email, texting, instant messaging, and the Internet all offer text-based ways to communicate instantly with people, making a hearing loss all but irrelevant. Perfect for me since I’ve always preferred to express myself through written words! Perhaps it speaks to the true novelty of text messaging that, young as I am, I can remember the days when none of my friends texted at all (even though I did), as well as the frustration of trying to find a nice cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard. (Today, with Blackberries and iPhones, that problem is obsolete.) In those bygone days, I would rely on the relay system to contact people – one or two of my longtime friends still remember how horrible that was! Then there’s also closed captioning, which allows me to access television and movies unlike deaf people of generations past – even though it still has a ways to go. The gradual introduction of captions to YouTube videos is encouraging, but now if only live streaming video, newscasts, and movie theaters would get their act together! (Not to mention live events and performances.) More on that another time, maybe…

The crux is this: as long as the accessibility is there, people will engage and communicate. Now I’m hoping I can learn to engage in an entirely different way!

(Re)Mapped

Last Thursday marked my one-month checkup and remapping with the audiologist at Stanford. I’m getting used to the tune-up process: sit down, discuss my progress over the past few weeks, plug into a computer program, adjust the sound levels to a new place where they’re louder, but more even and comfortable. I’m still with the Fidelity Hi-Res program like before, but have been told that I’m currently ramped up to three times the volume that I had at my very first mapping (which I’ve come to think of as electric shock day). That’s rapid progress, and the audiologist was very pleased, but I got the sense that I’ll soon approach a plateau in which more increase in volume input won’t be necessary. In other words, the first major hurdle is nearly past, and now my major challenge is learning how to use what I’ve got.

Which I still feel like I don’t do very well. My appointment involved an audiogram test in a listening chamber, an exercise which I’ve always disliked but tolerated out of necessity. (No one likes to be reminded too often of what they can’t do.) Beep. Raise my hand. Beep. Raise my hand. B – wait, was that really a beep? Or am I going crazy? Heck, raise my hand anyway. Same old drill. Although the CI has allowed me to take a huge jump up in what I can hear, pure tone-wise, I was discouraged by the fact that I still can’t make much sense of those sounds without visual input. They’re loud and dynamic and grating, but holding on to them is like trying to fold origami from water. On sentence and word comprehension tasks, I scored nearly 100 percent with lipreading – no big surprise. But when I judged by sound alone, the meaning was not quite there. Even less so than usual. Perhaps the audiologist’s voice was unfamiliar and jarring, perhaps my mind was under pressure; I won’t make excuses. I haven’t had the time to form the neural connections to make sense of what I’m hearing. I can accept that, and commit to more practice, yet I left the audiologist’s office with a tang of disappointment. Ah, the curse of being a perfectionist!

My day also involved a visit with an aural therapist in San Jose, who explained how my rehab might progress and the tasks I might tackle moving forward. In short, it’s now time for me to move from single-word listening exercises to entire integrated sentences and phrases. I felt pleased to be given a new direction; I function well with a definite task, goal, and purpose. My family has also been advised to sign less with me, or not to sign unless it’s clear I don’t understand, which will be a huge step away from the norm. Our house has been a sign-filled refuge for so long (even if I personally prefer to speak), and changing that alters the entire family dynamic. Watching my parents practically sit on their hands, in order to stop themselves from signing, amuses me so much that I sometimes do miss what they’re saying! But then again, I already know – too well – that the daunting norm in the hearing world is absence of sign. I’d best adapt to that with the CI, hard and unnatural as it might feel.

But, structured progress aside, practical experience is still the most useful (and enjoyable!) way of learning to hear. On the way back from California, I got more of that experience under my belt. Instead of driving the direct route back, south to I-40, we detoured and stopped in two places. The first, Yosemite Valley, is a destination I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. The scenery, needless to say, was stunning. I found it a real treat to combine the spectacular sights with the drama of the sounds unrolling around me. Jays calling in the trees, nature sounds playing in the visitors’ center, the river lapping by, the wind threading through the trees. My world felt three-dimensional and alive. I was tingling. The sound of the waterfalls, swooshing and rushing against the towering rock, especially took my breath away.

Our second destination also took my breath away, but for a very different reason. Las Vegas is a cacophony of voices, music, trinkets, tones and ring-a-dings, attractions, and flashing lights, all racing toward the cliff’s edge of overstimulation. Admittedly I’ve always become overwhelmed by visual excess, but that was without sound thrown in! I witnessed (and heard) it all with curious objectivity, and for five or six hours it was amusing. Amusing, but enough. Soon I wanted my own mind back. After watching a rousing musical show on Fremont Street, in which graphics, musical notes, and video clips flashed by on a gigantic ceiling, I staggered into the hotel and up to bed. I’ve never fallen asleep so fast.

Not to mention the endless audiobook-reading and music-listening that went on in the car!

One Month!

Just a quick post to celebrate a milestone: four weeks ago today, I started on this crazy hearing adventure of mine. Already a whole month! Where does the time go?

These weeks have been simultaneously thrilling and hard-won, eye-opening and frustrating. They've taken me through a roller coaster of emotions, discoveries, and novel experiences. But, now that the worst days are past, I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, stepping breathlessly into a world of Technicolor. The more time I spend with the CI, the more I find it dynamic and thrilling. And the world of hearing is so new and wonderful that, without it, I indeed feel like I've stepped back into dark sepia tones. (Don't get me wrong, the silence is still reassuring; it's the hearing aid that suddenly feels disappointing, like a glass of flat soda.) I much prefer Oz to dust-bowl Kansas!

These splashes of color have already changed my life in startling, concrete ways. I've discovered the joys of driving with music blasting in the car. I'm constantly plugged into some audio device, be it an iPod or a book on tape. Subtle sounds that I never heard before, I'm now taking for granted. With surprise, I discover that listening to people's voices is really improving my lipreading. I smile more often, fascinated by the smallest of things. I seem to be becoming a freer, happier, more confident person. Already I'm wondering how introverted I really am, and how much of my personality has been shaped by circumstance. Yes, I am still the same person I was several weeks ago, yet at times I find myself almost unrecognizable.

And this is still only the beginning. I'm willing to let this ride take me where it will - bring on tomorrow!