All Fired Up

A lot of changes in a few hours!

From the start of the appointment, it was right down to business. The audiologist, Amy, had a blue and green box about the size of two shoe boxes. It contained the external processor and all its supporting paraphanalia such as batteries, recharger, gadgets for connecting to MP3 players, etc.

(And, of course, literature including an instructional DVD complete with Closed Captions. This is ironic because I've been fretting lately over the fact that our Toshiba DVD player will not pass Closed Caption information to our TV even though the TV is quite capable of displaying Closed Captions. This was my main excuse for buying a new TV. But I digress ... )

Amy then showed us how to attach the processor, how to recharge the batteries correctly, etc. It took some time to get the processor magnet to stick to my head properly. Either I'm thick skinned or there is still some post-operation swelling under the skin. For now, there's an extra strong magnet to ensure that it doesn't fall off. I may have to be careful when walking close to large metal objects.

She fired up the processor and asked me if I could hear anything. At first, I could not so she turned it up a little. Then, sure enough, I could hear something. 'Hear' isn't quite the right word ... it's more a sort of buzz in the head, something like tinnitus. Or perhaps like the sound one hears at the dentist when he drills a little too deeply and hits a nerve.

Weird at first, but within a few minutes it starts to sound a bit more natural. Amy read through some text which I followed on a sheet of paper. No lip-reading allowed! It was about Salem and witches. I could hear all sorts of 's', 'shh' and 'ch' sounds - something I haven't heard in my right ear for some years. This alone was an improvement on any hearing aid I've tried!

Amy then read through a list of basic sounds or phonemes to ensure that I was able to perceive each one. Some I could understand better than others; certainly no difficulty with the 'sh' sound but more difficulty with the lower sounds like 'm', 'b' and vowels. She said that this was really just a starting point and more precise tuning would happen at the session next week by which time my ear/brain would have sorted things out a bit.

By 10:30, we were finished as Amy had another appointment. Barb and I went for coffee at the Sunnybrook Second Cup. This is a 'buzzing' kind of place and I was expecting it to seem very noisy. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was not overwhelming at all. I had no difficulty understanding Barb, though I rarely do anyway.

On the bus back to Davisville, I heard a number of interesting sounds:
* a 'ping' when tokens fall into the fare-box
* the hiss of brakes being released
* the stop announcements. I could clearly hear the word 'station' and some street names; others not so easy to make out. (Similarly, the station announcements on the subway)

I dropped in to the bulk food store on the way home to scoop up some oat bran and other things. I was amazed that I could hear the 'swish' sound of the scoop in the bin. I didn't even know it made a sound!!

And at home, I can hear all sorts of things I either haven't heard for a while or have never heard at all:
* the beep of the microwave oven control
* a crunching noise when Barb eats an apple
* the click of the computer mouse button (I always thought clicking and double-clicking was a concept, not a sound!)
* even the scroll-wheel of the mouse has its own sound!

That said, things do NOT yet sound natural in any sense of the word. So far, things sound tinny and mechanical. There's just no bass sound on the cochlear implant side. I've tried listening to a couple of bits of music that I know well - and they sound like they are being produced by a tiny calliope rather than a chamber orchestra. There's little variation in tone or volume.

But it has only been a few hours. I'm told that it will take a lot of time, practice and adaptation before the full potential of the CI can be realized.

So far, I'm feeling encouraged. It's far from perfect but a whole lot better than having no hearing in my right ear.