Something very, very cool happened today.
I had been looking around a small clothes shop in Oxford and was about to leave when the proprietor asked if I needed help finding anything. I said I was fine, thanks, and turned to walk out the door when I heard his voice behind me. I was not looking at him, but it said, quite clearly and distinctly, "Have a good day."
What? I could not believe my ears. It had been as simple as that. I heard him, and I understood. Snap, in an instant. There was no uncertainty, no frustration, no in-between struggle. Barely containing my own astonishment, I told him, "You too," and stepped out onto the bustling and noisy High Street.
Now, this exchange might sound trivial and not worth reporting, but for me it was a jaw-dropping breakthrough, a moment in which I literally functioned like a hearing person. That's just... unimaginable.
Whoo-hoo!
Showing posts with label speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speech. Show all posts
Monday, October 4, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Piece by Piece
These triumphs, though, don’t come without a good deal of drill and repetition. Our exercises have encompassed a range of categories, words, and ideas – and the exciting part is that I cast my net out farther with each day. Animals. Food. Flowers. Pieces of furniture. Sports and hobbies. Names of family members, friends, and pets. Numbers, months, days of the week. Social occasions. American states. Foreign countries. Random adjectives and verbs. All of these – framed in short sentences such as “I am traveling to ____ in ____,” or “Bob likes to eat ____” – are working their way into my auditory vocabulary. Some of them I now get easily, even lazily. Others, particularly new words I have not practiced before, I find flabbergasting at first. But the common pattern, ever astonishing to me, is that once I’ve heard a word once or twice, thereafter I can understand it almost without effort. The other night, I faltered when my mother said “flower arranging” in one of our practice sentences. But, several minutes later, when it came up again – snap. I knew. My brain had latched onto those words, formed some kind of neural connection already, without my conscious input. Isn’t it amazing?
Eventually, the hope is, I’ll be familiar enough with these words that they’ll flow in and I’ll grasp them without thought. But, I’ve discovered, this will not be the whole story. Another unexpected challenge is retaining what I’ve heard – not only recognizing the pieces of the puzzle, but holding on to those pieces long enough to assemble the entire picture. Now, I’ve always had a good memory, but I find that it sometimes fails me as far as hearing goes. Case in point: practicing random phone numbers. If I see a phone number written down, I remember it easily. But hearing it – that’s a different pathway, one that my brain has never had to use before. The numbers streak by, but as soon as I’ve grasped one, another is on its way. At the end of the string, I’ll stammer and say, “Wait – I understood that when I heard it, but now it’s not there!” It’s amusing how hard this is, and I often resort to spluttering, “Eight-something-seven-something-twotwothree!”
Even funnier, to me, are my auditory faux-pases. I’ve long been used to misunderstanding what people say, through lipreading, but I’ve rarely been able to find it amusing rather than embarrassing. Now, though, I’ve been blessed with the ability to laugh (sometimes uncontrollably) at what my brain thinks I hear, before it’s learned a word properly. Take these gems from a conversation with my sister Leigh:
L: I eat mangoes. Wait, why are you laughing?
R: It’s… never mind. Say it again.
L: What? Tell me!
R: It – it sounds like you said, ‘I eat my legs!’
[Later, after we’ve calmed down again]
L: I eat watermelon.
R: You eat Ronald Reagan!
L [laughing]: They don’t even sound the same!
R: Yes, they do – say it fast, watermelonRonaldReaganwatermelon!
[Later, approaching the edge]
L: I eat apples. Okay, what is it? Tell me!
R [laughing]: You eat bottles!
Other gems abound. Sometimes the sounds are somewhat close, other times they’re way off. Where does my brain dig up these things? Once it has fastened onto a supposed ‘meaning’ for a word, it stubbornly casts that nonsensical meaning onto that word every time. Even as I protest that that can’t possibly be right, that it doesn’t make sense. I’m at odds with myself. And yes, there are lasting consequences – even though I can now recognize “watermelon” for its true meaning, I still can’t hear it without thinking “Ronald Reagan!”
At the end of the listening road (wherever that is), along with an impressive arsenal of words in my auditory dictionary, I could have some very interesting mental connotations…
Thursday, August 12, 2010
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!
“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!
Monday, August 2, 2010
(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.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Hello, Donald
I feared this might happen. Everyone around me has turned into a duck.
Let me explain. My brain, getting better and better at processing the input from the CI, has suddenly discovered something that wasn’t there before: high-pitched sounds! The hearing loss I was born with eliminated the higher sound frequencies from my world, meaning I was always inherently biased toward low-frequency sounds. These deeper noises in the environment were always clearest to me, because they stimulated the section of the cochlea where I had the most residual sensory cells. Hence the reason I always preferred men’s voices before the CI. Higher frequencies, on the other hand, fell on the section of the cochlea’s basilar membrane where I was almost completely deaf. The only way I could perceive any kind of high-pitched noise was through artificial means: the programming on my hearing aids altered the sound to fit within the lower-frequency window in which I could hear. Now, with the CI, I’m able to hear the pure tones from the high-frequency section of the cochlea, and those high-pitched sounds are roaring – or, more accurately, squeaking – through my head for the first time.
Which means that, right now, everyone sounds like Mickey Mouse. Or Donald Duck. (I can’t endorse this description, having never heard Donald Duck before and even since the CI, but it seems hysterically accurate.) My family, friends, coworkers, strangers on the street: all their voices are cartoonish, tinny, squeaky like they’re inhaling from helium tanks. I’ve discovered that my brain, obsessive single-minded creature that it is, dwells on novelties. The lower frequencies aren’t that new, so it fixates on the higher pitches in the sound spectrum – Wait, what’s that?
A person’s voice, I tell it. Can’t you be normal?
It ignores me and says, Quack!
My days with Donald started about a week and a half ago, but have become more prevalent since. I speak and hear myself squeak – quack, quack! My house is crawling with ducks. The anchorwomen on the local news are ducks – something I noticed coming out of my room this morning, long before I saw the television. Even big, burly men speak to me with tinny quacking voices, and I struggle to keep a straight face. Admittedly, the effect fades once I turn up the CI volume and my brain becomes too stunned by sound to care whether it’s high- or low-pitched (which seems to be a line I’m treading these days).
The good news about Donald is that he shows the surprising leaps I’m taking in sound discrimination. Single-word listening exercises, as long as the sounds aren’t too closely related, have accelerated to where they’re sometimes wonderfully easy. As in, little-concentration-required, laugh-out-loud easy. This is a relief, because during the first weeks with the CI I often found myself exhausted, frustrated, and anxiously wondering if this chaos would ever make sense. I’ve never had so many consecutive stressed-out days in my life.
But at the same time, I’ve never felt so stimulated, so curious about the workings of the world.
The best news thus far: after borrowing them from a friend, I’ve started listening to the Harry Potter books on CD. This is something that I never could have done with hearing aids, and something that marks a huge step up in my abilities with the CI. Finally, I'm hearing well enough to follow speech for a sustained period of time, and these audiobooks are a great opportunity to practice. Harry and I have a long history – like many others from my generation, I was a huge fan when I was younger – and even now he still has something to teach me. I’ve heard countless accolades for Jim Dale’s Grammy Award-winning reading, and now it was time to hear it for myself. And let this deaf girl tell you, it’s quite good. I find the different voices fascinating, though at the beginning they tended to throw me off. My personal favorites are Dumbledore and Ron; Hermione is still somewhat difficult, while I find Malfoy and the Dursleys a hoot. (Of course, they all tend to sound like ducks!) The first day or two of listening required the greatest adjustment, seeing as all I’d been doing was children’s books. My brain would get tired after two pages and lose its place. Now, though, I can listen to one or two chapters at a time, without expending the same intense attention and energy. Sometimes I read ahead of the narrator’s voice, close my eyes, and just listen to the rhythm and flow of the words.
And imagine that, three weeks ago, I started with electric jolts!
Let me explain. My brain, getting better and better at processing the input from the CI, has suddenly discovered something that wasn’t there before: high-pitched sounds! The hearing loss I was born with eliminated the higher sound frequencies from my world, meaning I was always inherently biased toward low-frequency sounds. These deeper noises in the environment were always clearest to me, because they stimulated the section of the cochlea where I had the most residual sensory cells. Hence the reason I always preferred men’s voices before the CI. Higher frequencies, on the other hand, fell on the section of the cochlea’s basilar membrane where I was almost completely deaf. The only way I could perceive any kind of high-pitched noise was through artificial means: the programming on my hearing aids altered the sound to fit within the lower-frequency window in which I could hear. Now, with the CI, I’m able to hear the pure tones from the high-frequency section of the cochlea, and those high-pitched sounds are roaring – or, more accurately, squeaking – through my head for the first time.
Which means that, right now, everyone sounds like Mickey Mouse. Or Donald Duck. (I can’t endorse this description, having never heard Donald Duck before and even since the CI, but it seems hysterically accurate.) My family, friends, coworkers, strangers on the street: all their voices are cartoonish, tinny, squeaky like they’re inhaling from helium tanks. I’ve discovered that my brain, obsessive single-minded creature that it is, dwells on novelties. The lower frequencies aren’t that new, so it fixates on the higher pitches in the sound spectrum – Wait, what’s that?
A person’s voice, I tell it. Can’t you be normal?
It ignores me and says, Quack!
My days with Donald started about a week and a half ago, but have become more prevalent since. I speak and hear myself squeak – quack, quack! My house is crawling with ducks. The anchorwomen on the local news are ducks – something I noticed coming out of my room this morning, long before I saw the television. Even big, burly men speak to me with tinny quacking voices, and I struggle to keep a straight face. Admittedly, the effect fades once I turn up the CI volume and my brain becomes too stunned by sound to care whether it’s high- or low-pitched (which seems to be a line I’m treading these days).
The good news about Donald is that he shows the surprising leaps I’m taking in sound discrimination. Single-word listening exercises, as long as the sounds aren’t too closely related, have accelerated to where they’re sometimes wonderfully easy. As in, little-concentration-required, laugh-out-loud easy. This is a relief, because during the first weeks with the CI I often found myself exhausted, frustrated, and anxiously wondering if this chaos would ever make sense. I’ve never had so many consecutive stressed-out days in my life.
But at the same time, I’ve never felt so stimulated, so curious about the workings of the world.
The best news thus far: after borrowing them from a friend, I’ve started listening to the Harry Potter books on CD. This is something that I never could have done with hearing aids, and something that marks a huge step up in my abilities with the CI. Finally, I'm hearing well enough to follow speech for a sustained period of time, and these audiobooks are a great opportunity to practice. Harry and I have a long history – like many others from my generation, I was a huge fan when I was younger – and even now he still has something to teach me. I’ve heard countless accolades for Jim Dale’s Grammy Award-winning reading, and now it was time to hear it for myself. And let this deaf girl tell you, it’s quite good. I find the different voices fascinating, though at the beginning they tended to throw me off. My personal favorites are Dumbledore and Ron; Hermione is still somewhat difficult, while I find Malfoy and the Dursleys a hoot. (Of course, they all tend to sound like ducks!) The first day or two of listening required the greatest adjustment, seeing as all I’d been doing was children’s books. My brain would get tired after two pages and lose its place. Now, though, I can listen to one or two chapters at a time, without expending the same intense attention and energy. Sometimes I read ahead of the narrator’s voice, close my eyes, and just listen to the rhythm and flow of the words.
And imagine that, three weeks ago, I started with electric jolts!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A Word is a Word
Ice cream, baseball, hotdog, toothpaste, bluebird, rainbow. All right? Go.
“Hotdog.” Hotdog.
“Baseball.” Bluebird? No, baseball? Yes!
“Toothpaste.” Toothpaste.
“Hotdog.” H – hot – yes, hotdog, again.
“Ice cream.” Ice cream!
This has been me, listening, for the last two days. And, as you see, I’m getting them right! These common auditory testing words, which I’ve seen and listened to, over and over, in more hearing tests than I can remember, are finally fitting together. While I was able to distinguish them reasonably well with hearing aids, considering how little I had to work with, the CI has allowed me to jump to a new level. For the first time in my life, I’m starting to feel confident about what I’m hearing. It’s unbelievably self-affirming. Once I’ve learned words like these, the sound flows in, and oftentimes I know what it means! Much less guesswork, uncertainty, and even embarrassment for not understanding. The words are themselves, as clear in their identity as a fork or knife on the table, though of course it takes practice to sort through and recognize the sounds.
My family has been composing and working through lists of words since my remapping on Monday. This tune-up mainly consisted of increasing the neural input for each of the electrodes, finding a new (louder) level that I found comfortable. Since my turn-on two weeks ago, I’ve made a big jump up in stimulation, and the audiologist was a little concerned that it’d be too much and I’d make myself nuts. I feel very sane, though, and already the adjustment has made a difference. Music, for the first time, is starting to sound not only likeable and rhythmic, but actually a little bit beautiful. The tinkling notes dance through my head, dynamic and more complex, less staticky depending on the song. I’ve heard new sounds like the tone that accompanies the “walk” signal across the street – I never knew what blind people experienced! (The feeling is mutual, I guess.) The windowshades in my house zip as they go up and down. Sliding doors rattle in their frames as a breeze blows through the hallway. The car bumps and rumbles across the asphalt, objects clacking in the back seat. I rubbed my hands together the other day and jumped at the light "zzzzzt" they made. Whoa.
Concerning speech, I still have a ways to go, but I’m thrilled that I’m making progress. The higher frequencies like “shhhh” and “sssss” still sound nearly like mirror twins, as do “f” and “v” and other pairs of closely related cousins. I know the theoretical differences, but have yet to integrate them into my baby ear. The lists we make are arbitrary, groups of words with the same number of syllables and – just for the heck of it – a common theme. Furniture, kitchen utensils, office supplies, animals. The words make little sense at first. With each new list, I need to take the time to learn each new word, to differentiate it from its counterparts, but once I practice it becomes clear and natural. This process of learning, I admit, has been frustrating as well as wonderful: I keep wondering if I’m going to have to learn every word, one by one, like this. (A common joke lately: I should start reading myself the dictionary.)
But it’s happening, slowly. A word is a word is a word!
“Hotdog.” Hotdog.
“Baseball.” Bluebird? No, baseball? Yes!
“Toothpaste.” Toothpaste.
“Hotdog.” H – hot – yes, hotdog, again.
“Ice cream.” Ice cream!
This has been me, listening, for the last two days. And, as you see, I’m getting them right! These common auditory testing words, which I’ve seen and listened to, over and over, in more hearing tests than I can remember, are finally fitting together. While I was able to distinguish them reasonably well with hearing aids, considering how little I had to work with, the CI has allowed me to jump to a new level. For the first time in my life, I’m starting to feel confident about what I’m hearing. It’s unbelievably self-affirming. Once I’ve learned words like these, the sound flows in, and oftentimes I know what it means! Much less guesswork, uncertainty, and even embarrassment for not understanding. The words are themselves, as clear in their identity as a fork or knife on the table, though of course it takes practice to sort through and recognize the sounds.
My family has been composing and working through lists of words since my remapping on Monday. This tune-up mainly consisted of increasing the neural input for each of the electrodes, finding a new (louder) level that I found comfortable. Since my turn-on two weeks ago, I’ve made a big jump up in stimulation, and the audiologist was a little concerned that it’d be too much and I’d make myself nuts. I feel very sane, though, and already the adjustment has made a difference. Music, for the first time, is starting to sound not only likeable and rhythmic, but actually a little bit beautiful. The tinkling notes dance through my head, dynamic and more complex, less staticky depending on the song. I’ve heard new sounds like the tone that accompanies the “walk” signal across the street – I never knew what blind people experienced! (The feeling is mutual, I guess.) The windowshades in my house zip as they go up and down. Sliding doors rattle in their frames as a breeze blows through the hallway. The car bumps and rumbles across the asphalt, objects clacking in the back seat. I rubbed my hands together the other day and jumped at the light "zzzzzt" they made. Whoa.
Concerning speech, I still have a ways to go, but I’m thrilled that I’m making progress. The higher frequencies like “shhhh” and “sssss” still sound nearly like mirror twins, as do “f” and “v” and other pairs of closely related cousins. I know the theoretical differences, but have yet to integrate them into my baby ear. The lists we make are arbitrary, groups of words with the same number of syllables and – just for the heck of it – a common theme. Furniture, kitchen utensils, office supplies, animals. The words make little sense at first. With each new list, I need to take the time to learn each new word, to differentiate it from its counterparts, but once I practice it becomes clear and natural. This process of learning, I admit, has been frustrating as well as wonderful: I keep wondering if I’m going to have to learn every word, one by one, like this. (A common joke lately: I should start reading myself the dictionary.)
But it’s happening, slowly. A word is a word is a word!
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