I’m falling in love with my cochlear implant! The world around me is extremely loud, and I’m still trying to get used to everything. So much has happened since my activation and mapping appointments. I had to force myself to wear the just my cochlear implant, which meant I had to take out my left hearing aid. I really did not like this. All the sounds were loud and confusing. A few days after my last mapping, I was able to tell the difference between men, women and children’s voices. Everyone still sounded like chipmunks. But the more I wore just my cochlear implant, the more everything started to sound clear and make sense. The chipmunk voices became more like robotic/helium voices. But now everyone is starting to sound like what I think may be “normal”. The sounds around me are becoming more clear. I still rely a lot on visual access to the speaker and sign language. My brain is being trained to figure out all the sounds. After about a week of wearing the implant alone, the squealing slowly diminished and became loud white noise. That is a huge relief as I’m not annoyed with the world and I don’t have anymore headaches. When I first put on my cochlear implant in the morning, I do hear a little bit of squealing but it becomes white noises after a few minutes. It is also incredibly loud and that it is uncomfortable! Imagine turning the stereo on and the volume is turned up to the max; you jump at first. After a little while, maybe a minute, everything is fine. I wish the implant wasn’t so loud when first putting it on in the morning.
I force myself to listen to familiar music while driving in the car matching the lyrics with the songs. I always watch TV with captioning on and now try to match what I hear with the captioning. I’m starting to recognize words in a specific topic in isolation, and I am beginning to understanding phrases from others without the visual support.
One morning, Peter and I were going somewhere, and I decided to give myself a pedicure while Peter was getting ready. I’m sitting on our bathroom counter painting my toes. Peter is in the bedroom and he says “Babe! I don’t even know what to wear!” I said, “Clothes! You wear clothes! DUH!”. Then I stopped painting my toes. “Peter! I know that was a sarcastic remark, but that’s no surprise because I’m sarcastic and that’s definitely a “Kayla answer”, but did you know that I understood you without looking at you for the first time using just my cochlear implant?!” I got a big hug and a high five.
While driving home one night from a cook-out, I asked Peter to do a listening exercise with me. Since I was driving in the dark, there’s no way I could read his lips or have any form of visual cues. He gave me the topic “Animals” and started saying different animals. My job was to see if I could repeat them. At first, this was hard because I didn’t have visual access. That forced me to really listen. I tried to glance over at him and he told me to look away. He repeated himself until I could repeat what he said correctly. We went through a lot of different animals, and I got most of them right the first time. He even threw in “crab cake” to throw me off. We switched over to different foods. There were a few times where I really couldn’t make out what he was saying. Peter learned that even though my speech is pretty clear, he noticed that I can’t always pronounce some of words correctly. He noticed that I struggle with /s/, /ts/, /st/, and some other sounds. He has me repeating words and work on articulation. I get frustrated because I really dislike speech, but I am going to have to work on that. I’m considering some speech therapy sessions to brush up on my articulation skills.
First time using the Nucleus AquaPlus:
I spent an afternoon with Peter’s family at the lake he grew up near. We decided to go for a swim and enjoy ourselves. The lake has a dock in the middle where we can jump off into the water. I wanted to give my AquaPlus a try. The Nucleus AquaPlus is the waterproof accessory that came with my cochlear implant kit.
Here’s a really good video that shows how the AquaPlus accessory works:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyWVsYLWUk#action=share
I put on my waterproof cochlear implant and headed to the lake. I was a little nervous because this is my first time using a very expensive device in the water. As I waded into the water, it felt so strange being able to hear the world around me. I’ve been in the water with my hearing aids on before, but never past my knees. The water was already up to my chest and Peter’s nephews were splashing water around me. I continued to wade out in the water until I could no longer touch the ground; I started to swim with my head above the water. I was so paranoid and it felt extremely weird being able to hear the water sloshing around my head. I climbed up onto the dock and joined everyone to jump off. Even though I have the processors connected to my bathing suit with a safety line, I still wanted to hold onto it before jumping in. I was starting to get second thoughts about this. Pressing my hands up against the processor and my ear, I jumped off the dock. I noticed the magnet came off my head. I still can’t reach the ground and I’m swimming around trying to put the magnet back on my head. I wasn’t able to do this! I’m really good at multitasking, but not so much in the water. I swam back to the dock and climbed out. I thought I had the magnet attached to my head but I wasn’t hearing anything. I took it off, put it back on and I could hear again. This was amazing! I just submerged myself underwater with my processor. I wanted to go again; this time I pressed my hand onto my ear and the magnet. I jumped off the dock again. This time, the implant stayed on and I heard my own bubbles under water! When I came back up to the top of the water, I yelled out to everyone that I could hear my own bubbles underwater! I was so excited and amazed how the waterproof accessory worked with the cochlear implant. I swam back towards the beach and relaxed on a float. I hun out with with Peter’s family, who don’t know how to sign. Peter’s nephews are taking a great interest in learning how to sign. It was so nice to be able to hear while in the water — it just makes everything so much easier. I still relied on lip reading and signs from Peter. We left the lake and headed back to his parent’s house and I took off the AquaPlus. My processors were dry and I put them back on.
I recently went to the pool and used the AquaPlus for the second time. Before jumping in the pool, I become really nervous thinking I need to take off the implant. It’s going to be really hard breaking the habit that I have the opportunity now to hear in the water. Let’s see if I can comfortably break 26 years of swimming in silence. I find myself using this when I’m with people that don’t sign versus those that do sign. I prefer to swim and be in the water without the AquaPlus.
Using the Phone Clip:
One night, while multitasking (working on the last few lesson plans for summer school, FaceBooking, reading lyrics while listening to music from my laptop) I decided to stream the songs directly to my implant. I pulled out my phone clip which has a bluetooth feature. After charging it for awhile, I paired the phone clip with my processor and my phone. I started to play some music from my Spotify account and I could hear Whitney Houston signing “I wanna dance with somebody…” in my processor. I left my phone on the couch in the living room, took the phone clip with me into the bedroom and I could still hear the music playing in my processor. This acted like headphones, only I’m not connected to my phone or laptop with a wire, and is exactly what it’s like using my FM coupled with my hearing aids. I know I’m going to love this accessory because I’ll be listening to music while I’m working in the office without bothering my coworkers, or at home while Peter is sleeping and I don’t have to worry about waking him up.
Maybe one day, I’ll be able to talk on the phone and use the phone clip as a bluetooth device. #futuregoals! I have another device called a “mini mic” which is a microphone for someone to wear and I can hear their voice directly through my processor. I haven’t had the opportunity to use this yet, but I plan to in the near future!
As for learning “new sounds”, there hasn’t been a lot of “new” sounds. It’s been more of hearing sounds at a distance I never heard before unless it was right up to my hearing aids. Here are some mini stories:
- One morning, I was on my balcony skyping with mom. I was struggling to understand her as the birds were constantly chirping and tweeting. I had to go inside of my apartment in order to hear her better.
- I’m hearing a lot of high frequency sounds more than anything, especially /shh/ and /sss/. These sounds are very loud and crisp. I hear these sounds a lot better than other sounds.
- I poured milk onto my cereal one morning, and I heard my rice krispies go “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” It was a pretty fun moment!
- Once day I was at the store with Peter and his family. There was a small exercise trampoline with a child jumping on it. I heard the springs squeaking. I could still hear them from the other side of the store. It sounded like it was right next to my ears.
- When the water is running in the sink, I feel like I’m hanging out near the water falls. It’s incredibly loud!
- One evening while visiting my mom in Blacksburg, I was looking through pictures. While sitting on the couch, I could hear something going on so I looked around the room trying to match the sound with whatever is going on. I looked at mom flipping through the pictures. I looked at our dog playing with her toys. I kept searching around the room. I finally heard consistent tapping which is a familiar sound. I asked my mom if my dad was in the room at the back of our house making his own cigarettes; she said yes. I was hearing the mechanical sounds from his machine and him tapping the cigarettes on the table to get the tobacco in the tubes. My parents were amazed that I was hearing things at a distance.
- I went out one afternoon with Peter fishing. We ended up in DC and I couldn’t fish with him due to not having a DC fishing license. While he fished, I hung out on the bridge right across from the Reagan Airport. I worked on identifying different sounds between cars, motorcycles, trucks and airplanes. I’m still working on identifying the different vehicles and which directions they come from.
Even though things are going really well and I’m starting to identify and hear sounds at a distance. I still have a long way to with my auditory training. I have my first appointment booked for auditory rehabilitation in October at Gallaudet University. I’m looking forward to my next mapping appointment which is in a matter of weeks.
