Looking Back on Goals - Again

Lately I've been growing frustrated (again) by the fact that my listening progress doesn't feel like it's moving as fast as I'd like it to. This perspective challenge has been present all along with the CI (where am I going? how have I improved?), but it arises and recurs in waves. There are days in which I feel unbelievably optimistic, and others in which what I want hovers out of reach. About to graduate from college, I look out at the "real world" and all the things in it and often feel intimidated, since communication can still seem like a barrier. Of course, success is possible anyway, and I've gotten better at getting creative in the last few years, but the fact remains that some things are still not straightforward.

Yet, this morning, I had a session with my auditory therapist in which I voiced some of the above insecurities. In controlled situations, the listening progress is there, but it often feels slow. We talked a bit, and then she flipped back through her file and pulled out a piece of paper. On it were written my goals for the CI from a year ago, or maybe a year and a half. They were as follows:

1. Recognize more individual words based on sound alone

A million times yes. It really depends on the good old auditory memory, but the fact that I can now hear a word and know what it is, based on listening, is amazing.

2. Be able to have base-level conversations in quiet with a familiar voice

Yes. Although this often doesn't apply to the real world, I've known for a while that if I sit inside with either of my parents or someone else familiar, I will be able to hear, understand, and respond to the things they say to me.

3. Hear and recognize more high-frequency sounds than I used to

Definitely yes. It's astonishing, how much I've started taking them for granted.

4. Encounter fewer situations in which people ask me, "Did you hear that noise?" and I reply, "No."

Yes! I can't remember the last time this happened. More often, it's the reverse: people ask me if I heard that noise and I internally tilt my head and laugh and then say, "Yeah, I did." Like, duh, my CI is awesome. Or I actually do tilt my head and listen and say, "Oh! Yes! That's a cool new noise!"

5. Feel more comfortable and confident in a group

This is probably the only one for which my answer is "not so much." There are just too many variables, although various strategies have helped me cope better in groups than I used to - including knowing my limits and being able to engage and disengage as necessary.

Number five notwithstanding, these are all things that I found unimaginable two years ago. Looking back on that progress is empowering, even if, as my therapist pointed out, of course the goal that I'm always subconsciously thinking of, that I'm seeing around me, that I'm wanting each day, is to sit at a table with a group of smart, engaging, talkative hearing friends and understand their rapid-fire conversations and join in like a pro. But sometimes it's better to measure progress from the ground up. These are some hefty peaks scaled.

Reality check: achieved. For now.

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. :)

An Evening With David Sedaris

Another recent hearing experience I've been meaning to write about (though it's been several weeks now) is the chance I had to go see David Sedaris read on campus earlier this month. Hey, it's never too late for reflection, right?

As soon as I heard Sedaris was coming, I knew it was something I didn't want to pass up on. But, even as someone who's big on writing, I'm not the biggest fan of going to author readings. The auditory experience (of hearing what a piece of work sounds like, or what interpretation the writer casts on it via his/her style of reading) has never been there for me, and I'd rather read the short story/poem/essay/etc to myself. There are few things more frustrating, both for me and my ASL interpreters, than trying to fully access a piece of work when the writer is reading briskly from the page, complex metaphors and imagery and diction and all. Even the most skilled interpreter, without the chance to rehearse extensively, has to work very hard to deliver an accurate translation/transliteration of a written work. Without relapsing completely into the abstract grammar and conceptual structure of ASL, that is. I hate having crisp verbal concepts from written English get lost in translation that way - after all, isn't it the English version that I'm interested in, that I've come to the reading anticipating to contemplate? My interpreters know this, and I'm always impressed by how well they do in trying to satisfy my literalist, straight-from-the-page tendencies. Still, oftentimes the easiest solution for me (and them!) is to get my hands on a written transcript of what the writer is reading, and just access it that way. Even if this in itself raises complications: if I'm taking the time to attend a reading, only to look straight at the page instead of the verbal performance, is it worth it? Might I just as well read that material at home to myself?

Now, I'm not going to say David Sedaris's reading was a sudden breakthrough in my history with author readings. It wasn't. But it was a big enough event for me to put aside my usual misgivings and go. (I've been trying to do this more often in recent months. Maybe part of it is conceit. If I can't access the full impact of what David Sedaris or another big-name author was saying, and how, then at least I can say I've seen David Sedaris.) And, combined with the fact that Sedaris was my first experience with trying to listen to comedy, I walked away with some interesting insights.

It was a full house in the on-campus auditorium where Sedaris was speaking, and I arrived at my seats in the front row to find my interpreter team cramming over copies of his essays to be read that night. (Apparently one of them had gone up to get his autograph beforehand, and when she let it drop that she was an ASL interpreter, he promptly insisted on letting her read over his material, apologized for not knowing there would be interpreters and providing copies in advance, and promised not to make any cheap sign-related jokes. I've seen too many of those, so props to you, Mr. Sedaris.) Apparently the preparation helped, for both interpreters zipped through Sedaris's essays and off-the-cuff remarks without any problem. It helped that his speaking pace was moderate; never did he rush ahead or get lost in his own flurry. Even when the crowd was roaring with laughter, he'd only give a small grin at most, take a breath, and move on. His material was lively, his essays provocative, and I walked away having had a good time.

But... there was still something I didn't get. There was still a sense of personal distance that hovered over my entire experience of the night. I think most of it had to do with the fact that, regardless of how skilled my interpreters were, I was still the one watching.

"His voice is just funny," one of my interpreters slipped in as Sedaris started talking - one of those side comments that they sometimes give me, to help me access the full context of what is going on. As soon as she told me that, I tried to pay closer attention. I cranked my CI up. I watched the sign language streak by, but at the same time I tried to hang onto Sedaris's voice, to understand exactly what gave it its comic effect. And, although I was able to match what I heard with what I saw, it was still just a voice. What made it funny? "He sounds almost like a woman," my other interpreter said after the event was over.

"Is that what makes him so good?" I asked her. "Is it the way his voice sounds?"

"He has such a unique voice," she told me. "It's really weird. I can't describe it - it's just weird. It's a great radio voice. You hear it and you can't stop listening."

I still didn't get it. I have no conception of how someone's voice can be alluring, mesmerizing, funny, or any of those things. Or if I do, it's on a very superficial level. I've noticed that, in everyday life, there are some voices I like more than others, though I can't say why. I've started recognizing some people's voices, at least once I identify the speaker and confirm my own subconscious expectations. Regardless of whether I like a voice or not, however, that's all the subtext I ever associate with it: like or dislike. I understand the concept of inserting emotion into your voice when speaking. I do that myself - it's something I take some pride in, that even before the CI I understood how to inflect my voice when I asked questions, and how to express surprise and sarcasm and excitement and flatness at will. (Even if I'm just about the worst storyteller because of my inability to achieve them in more complex combination.) To be honest, though, I associate verbal nuances more with facial expression, body language, or other subjective context. They're not something I can discern from listening alone.

So, back to David Sedaris. Throughout the night, I would hear the crowd around me erupting at some remark  he made. Afterwards I had a few friends tell me their sides hurt from laughing. But, other than a chuckle or two, I didn't laugh very much. First I'd hear the laughter - hold on, wait for it, something's funny. Then, after the slight time lag from the interpreter's end, my mind would race, converting the words from sign language to English. Finally, I would review what I'd just seen, and usually grasp what could have been interpreted as humorous in that sentence. But note the passive voice: I reviewed Sedaris's humor as an observer of that humor, not as a participant in it. The timing, for the most part, was lost on me. The words weren't uproariously funny in and of themselves, I wasn't hearing them, and my steps of mental translation seemed to whisk me out of the immediate moment in which comedy occurs.

This detachment doesn't happen to me as often when I watch movies or hold everyday conversations, in which more visual input accompanies the auditory. I left the reading distracted by the questions spinning through my mind. Yet again, what makes listening to someone funny? What's in a voice, anyway?

Only a few days later did one of my best friends give me an answer. "The read-out-loud aspect," she said, "is like being tickled. It strikes you differently when the timing and delivery are out of your control." Her simile made sense to me, at least cognitively. That's what I had been missing.

I still wonder what it would be like to hear it, I really do. Although I guess I'm not ticklish either...

Year One

Well. I've survived my first year with the CI. I can't quite believe it. When I went in for my one-year follow-up appointments yesterday, my surgeon walked into the room and marveled, looking at my chart, that time had passed so quickly. Sitting in that chair where I had sat, both when anxiously considering getting a CI and when anxiously wondering what would happen when it came on, I had to agree wholeheartedly.

So, one-year remapping with my audiologist: check. Speech recognition had improved since last time, and I felt more confidence in what I was hearing. Progress. At this point, the goal isn't necessarily giving me more volume - I've stabilized at roughly the point I was at six months ago - but optimizing the balance and input of the BTE to the electrode array. We stayed with similar settings to those I already had (same IDR and similar levels of stimulation), but already the changes have left me startled by the sound quality in my environment. Sounds that I'd thought were familiar (myself typing, myself swallowing, chairs scraping across the floor) seem to have shifted. They're different, more prominent, more raw. They feel new all over again. I'm wondering if this process is one that will never end - shaking things up, then stabilizing, then shaking them up again.

Perhaps so, because the learning curve continues. It might not rub my nerves as raw as it did last summer, but neuroplasticity doesn't come without breaking old ways and old molds over and over. If anything, that's what the last year has taught me, irrespective of hearing. I've experienced the world in new and astonishing ways, ways that had previously lay outside my realm of imagination, and I've discovered a flexibility and a strength and a curiosity that I didn't know I had. It's been quite a ride from that first day one year ago, that seemed so chaotic and that I remember so clearly. I'd like to reflect on it more fully at some point. But for now - a thumbs-up for hearing!

The D-Bomb

I’m never quite sure how to drop it, or when. But I need to figure it out.

By “it,” I mean the question of telling people I meet that I'm deaf. I’m not exactly like them, I can’t do certain things, and specific accommodations need to be made for me, but I also want to be clear about the abilities that I do have and to avoid making the hearing-loss issue intimidating. It’s a quandary that, post-CI, I still struggle with. How to be clear, straightforward, approachable, fair, but yet realistic?

It’s a tricky challenge with no one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, at the outset of a conversation or a relationship, dropping the “d-bomb” simply isn’t necessary – or relevant. When applying for a job or internship position, no way am I going to mention it. Why should I, when it doesn’t at all affect my qualifications or my ability to perform? Starting every introduction email with the disclaimer, “By the way, before you decide how to interact with me in the future, you should know that I am deaf” – that’s not an option. It’s selling myself short. I refuse to let one aspect of my identity define my every interaction. In pursuing my real-world activities, I am a student, a reader and a writer, a hard worker, a participator, et cetera, first. I begin long-distance interactions simply as myself – which of course brings up the interesting question of how my deafness fits into this holistic sense of self-identity. (Messy question; not going there.)

However, when the time for an interview rolls around, or when I find myself about to (gulp) actually meet the individual with whom I’ve been corresponding, I need to decide what to do. In the past, I’ve tried both approaches. I’ve stayed mum about the d-word and showed up hoping that the situation won’t escalate into something unmanageable, and/or that my lipreading skills will be able to save me.

(Sometimes, that’s worked beautifully. Other times, I find myself reeling and backtracking, trying to explain away the minor snags that have suddenly turned into ogres. It depends on the person and the situation, it really does. If I bring up the deafness issue with some people, I look back afterwards and wonder why I made it such a big deal. Why, it really was irrelevant. Other people, however, need to be slammed over the head with it before I feel like I can approach a semblance of my normal ability to function.)

Or, I’ll play my cards straight before I even meet this person face-to-face. Deep breath. Time to let the cat out of the bag. I’m embarrassed every time it happens, for whatever reason. I suppose because I’ve succeeded so far in my life goal of Interacting Normally With Hearing People, and now I’m about to voluntarily set myself apart.

(Interestingly, this approach of prior disclosure is also successful, or not, depending on the person and the situation. Some people, if they’ve been given time to ruminate over “Ohmygoshshe’sdeafIdon’tknowwhattodo,” come to pieces in the actual interaction. They’re more nervous than I am, they overenunciate, they question themselves, and so the entire meeting becomes damage control on my part, trying to reassure said person back to the impression-of-hearing-person-normalcy that they had before. Other people, however, simply appreciate the heads-up. I’ve had several surprising situations arise where I’ll meet someone who unexpectedly knows some sign language or who already has deaf friends or family members – if I hadn’t mentioned my own deafness, I wouldn’t have received the gift, so to speak, of being able to interact on this level.)

The d-bomb is troublesome even in casual interactions. Sometimes I’ll be out and about and meet someone new. He or she is easy to lipread, and so we settle into a comfortable conversation without me ever bringing up my hearing loss at all. I’m enjoying myself when this new hearing companion does something that does not adhere with my version of reality, such as saying “Give me a phone call!” At that moment, of course, I have to break the mold, bring my deafness out of the closet, and say, “Whoa, hold on.” And then, of course, the situation feels awkward because I hadn’t mentioned this gee-probably-rather-important-fact before. Why? It wasn’t necessary. I was comfortable then. Honestly, I forgot.

Or, I’ll indicate to a new friend what I need in a one-on-one interaction, only to see that friend again in a group and realize that he or she really doesn’t get the big picture, doesn’t get that what works in one situation falls apart in another. Then, I’m obliged to speak up and clarify further, but too often it becomes easy to embrace a self-defeatist mindset and let things unfold as they will.

This is a problem: I tend to only mention my deafness when it becomes troublesome. Otherwise, I shove it under the carpet and ignore it. Ignoring it is something I’ve tried to do for a while, and it doesn’t work. Not only is it unfair to me, it’s unfair to the people whom I could construct valuable relationships with, if they only knew what to do. Approaching the hearing world head-on was part of my decision to get a CI, and since then I’ve gotten progressively better at being up-front. (But, but – there are situations where being up-front isn’t necessary! Where I can cope! Where lipreading is fine! Where the CI is amazing! Where I don’t feel the need to let every single person I meet know just how complicated all of this is! Like I said, all of these questions can get tricky.)

There are other questions I’m mulling over, too. For instance, what language should I use? Oftentimes “Hello, my name is Rachel and I’m deaf” doesn’t seem to work. Hearing people don’t know what to do with that word, that entire concept. They’ve often never thought about what it means. I’m as likely to get stares of shock as I am offers of accommodation. One of my deaf friends once advised me to introduce it through subtler means and action-significant words, such as “I lipread” or “I need you to look at me when you talk.” There, is that better? I’ve revealed something important about myself but also given my companion some indication of how he or she should behave. That's more productive and fair, isn't it?

Interestingly, talking about my CI fits into the entire d-bomb dilemma. “So that thing lets you hear?” people will ask me. I hesitate before giving them an answer. I want to explain that hearing isn’t the same as understanding, that it’s a beast of a process, that what I’m capable of now isn’t what I’ll be capable of in six months, or (certainly not!) what I was capable of when I first got switched on. But, for the uninitiated, hearing is a binary: either you can, or you can’t. I don’t want to contribute to misconceptions that, with my CI, I’m able to function one hundred percent normally, but I also don’t want to underemphasize the immense difference it has made in my life. So I sidestep the question a bit. I try to respond to the confused inquiries of “If you have a cochlear implant, then, doesn’t that mean you’re not deaf after all?” I try to address how lipreading and structuring my environment are still very important tools, even though, yes, I technically “can” hear at an almost-normal plane. The concept of balance between two worlds, deaf and hearing, is difficult for many people. And, in a way, the CI has only made it more complicated to explain.

In the end, it’s easy to want to give up. I find that sometimes there’s no way to be consistent about how I present myself and my deafness. But there must be a way to be consistently included, consistently understood, consistently enabled. There must be – just hold on, though, I’m working on it.

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!

National Disability Awareness Month

The month of October is National Disability Awareness Month in the U.S. (how can it be October already?!). Actually, as designated by Congress it's National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and anyone who has talked to me about my school and work experiences knows how strongly I feel about disability and level-playing-field accessibility vis-a-vis the common buzzphrase of "diversity."

But, that aside, I'd like to take a moment on this blog to promote real disability awareness - not only in the workplace but everywhere else. All too often, awareness is the crux that allows us to see past our first impressions to grasp a person's true substance and character. And all too often, a "disability" is just something that requires a change in perspective or lifestyle, not a tragic or overbearing handicap.

From my own standpoint, I see my disability not simply as that, a disability, but as one of the strongest shaping forces of my experience. More than anything else, being deaf has allowed me to better understand the things that are important in life, as well as the people who are truly worthwhile. So, in that regard, I can consider myself fortunate - and also obliged to help others find their way, even as I keep experimenting with mine.

Off my soapbox now. But never underestimate the impact of an open, inquiring, yet discerning mind.

Reflections

The summer is almost over; my return to classes and university life is imminent. This change of pace, I feel, commands a bit of reflection.

Looking back, I am not the same person I was in June. This statement, of course, is true after almost any summer, but mine has been unusually enlightening. It was not a summer that I looked forward to, at first. I only saw the void of the unknown, combined with mundane home life and a separation from my friends and independent lifestyle. Yet I emerge from it having discovered so much, and feeling so eager to go on discovering more.

Only now do I have the presence of mind to look back at myself, pre-cochlear implant, and realize just how much I was struggling with. At times, I remember feeling as if I had the entire weight and expectations of the hearing world on my shoulders. As highly developed as my skills were, I couldn’t quite handle that burden, and I don’t think even I realized how unhappy I was at times. Now, challenges still lie ahead, and my listening skills are still far from perfect, but I’m empowered by the thought that I can change, that I can progress. This in itself has brought unexpected peace.

I had my three-month checkup and remapping this past Monday. In the days and weeks immediately before the appointment, I’d become increasingly dissatisfied with the sound quality from the CI. I’d had a while to acclimate to that program, so that as a result the volume felt diminished, sometimes making me strain to hear. My head was no longer full of sound – a feeling which, in all honesty, I’ve come to crave. During my appointment, I must have sounded like a drug addict – more, give me more! But, interestingly, my audiologist explained that the purpose of this remapping wasn’t as simple as turning the volume up. It was time to tweak in other ways, and to begin negotiating the fine balance between volume and clarity. A huge leap up in electrode volume would likely have negatively affected the clarity from the CI – just like, when a person shouts, the increased volume doesn’t make his/her voice any clearer. Often quite the opposite. (This is something hearing people frequently don’t realize; shouting at me doesn’t help.) The bottom line is: I have to continue learning how to use what I’ve got.

Still, we did increase the electrode input, and adjusted the balance of stimulation across the array. And, since then, the subtle improvements in the sound quality with the CI have left me amazed. Music – oh, music, who would have thought I’d feel the notes so physically and personally? A friend of mine recently challenged me to think about dominant chords and the tension buildup and release inherent in any musical piece. I still don’t really understand how or why one chord can be “dominant” over another (C versus G? what?), but while listening to classical right after my remapping I felt that tension – felt the chords building, swelling, then abiding. I can’t quite describe what it sounded like; I experienced it more in the form of a physical response. In any case, it was a real “wow” moment! In the days since, my iTunes (fleshed out with a compilation of songs from one of my best friends) has gotten rather heavy use…

Since the remapping, even people’s voices are sounding smoother and more natural than ever. I was startled to discover how rich and resonant the reader on my audiobooks sounded – quite different from the mechanical robot (slash duck) I heard at the beginning! Who’d’ve thunk it, there’s a real human voice on that CD! I keep noticing other environmental sounds poking through, too – the boink-boink of elastic bands, my fingers rubbing against the grain of wood, other people chewing food across the room (slightly gross). The last few days and weeks have really marked the first time that the CI has started feeling like an inherent part of me. By all accounts, this normalization does tend to happen at around three months – hurrah, the worst is over! And I still have a steep learning curve ahead. I still tend to set the bar a little too high while practicing, and resultantly come down too hard on myself – but who would have thought I’d feel this optimistic, compared with the unpleasant chaos of two months ago?

All that said, this is the last post I will make on this blog for a little while. I’m currently preparing to leave for a quarter abroad at Oxford. (Follow my travels at http://anglobibliophile.blogspot.com/.) Upon reflection, my hearing experiences this summer have prepared me for this further leap into the unknown – for what could be more unknown to me than sound? Comparatively, living in a foreign country seems like a piece of cake!

Now we’ll have to see how my baby CI helps me cope with those British accents!