Into the void.

In less than 12 hours, at the ungodly hour of 5:45 a.m., I will check in at the hospital. The hospital is located far, far away from home, making for a ridiculously early wake-up time that will be much harder on my husband and chauffeur than it will be on me. After all, I get to sleep through the whole thing, while he has to sit around for hours and hours waiting for me. Nevertheless, by mid-day tomorrow, we should be heading back home.

I'm ready for the procedure itself. But as for what comes next, it still feels like the Great Unknown. I simply have no idea how I'm going to feel, and how I'm going to hear and function, starting in less than a day.

People keep asking me how quickly I will be able to hear with the implant. This is a simple question with a more complicated answer than you might realize. I won't hear anything with the implant until May 31, when it is activated. That's two whole weeks with only one functioning ear, and those two weeks scare me the most right now. I know, logically, that I'll be fine, and I've warned friends, family, and co-workers that I may not be feeling up to a great deal of interaction during that stretch, but it's unnerving to anticipate.

Once I receive my external processor and have the device switched on, I will almost certainly be able to "hear" with it immediately. What will take time is to understand what I'm hearing - to separate and distinguish and comprehend the sounds as speech, music, traffic, computer keyboard, cell-phone ring, doorbell, and kitty cat. I can't predict how long that process will take, and neither my doctor nor my audiologist has hazarded a projection. They say "quickly," because I hear most of those sounds to some degree now, and I already understand what speech sounds like, but attaching a specific duration to "quickly" would likely cause me impatience, frustration, and self-doubt.

And so, I don't know. But I'll keep you posted.

Comments

[jdz]

Best of luck Mad!

[Coralie]

Sending good thoughts your way, and wishing for the very best outcome.

[Liz]

Good luck, Mad! I will be thinking of you and checking back to see how you are.

[Laura]

Wishing you all the best, Mad! I will be thinking of you.