Wonder Twin Powers . . .

Activate!

Hee. I've been waiting for months to use that post title. Alas, I'm feeling less like the Bionic Woman (or Jayna, for that matter), and more like C3PO, bombarded by the incessant beeping and whistling of R2D2. Really, if you played some of the little droid's scenes from any of the original Star Wars movies, you'd have a pretty good sense of what it sounds like in my head right now.

But I am definitely hearing something! When the audiologist initially handed me the processor and turned on the device, I almost jumped out of my skin at the loudness (and ugliness) of the first few beeps. Then she ran through sets of beeps at different pitches and volumes, and I was able to tell with almost 100% accuracy how many beeps were in each sequence.

She disconnected the processor from her computer, and turned it on for real. And I heard R2D2. Loud, annoying, incomprehensible R2D2. Nothing that sounded like anything familiar or pleasant, and nothing that seemed to correspond to the movement of lips or to other identifiable sound sources.

My audiologist assured me that this is normal and predictable, and she set about tweaking the "map," the programming inside my sound processor, to make things more tolerable and comprehensible. None of the changes made things sound not-whistly-beepy, but her adjustments brought the volume and pitch to more comfortable levels. After a little while, she and Steve stopped talking or moving, and I realized that the sounds I was hearing DID, in fact, correspond to talking, computer-using, paper-rustling, and other identifiable sources. Not that I could identify any particular source, but this was a bit of a breakthrough.

Next, the audiologist brought out some noisy toys. She shook a ring of bells, which caused me to jump and grab my ear. A tambourine and a single bell were only slightly less obnoxious-sounding. The audiologist explained that I haven't been able to hear with the high-pitch-sensing nerves in my cochlea for over 25 years, so they're kind of freaking out at the stimulation.

Ultimately, she arrived at an initial map and volume setting. She asked me to try to get comfortable with the volume at its maximum level, and explained that when I come back (this afternoon), we should be able to do some significant refinements to the map and bump up the volume range quite a bit. Then, after demonstrating all the nifty features of my processor and its accessories, she sent us home.

In the car, I tried turning my left-ear hearing aid off and listening with just the CI. Mostly, I heard R2D2. I couldn't hear Steve talking at all, couldn't hear the radio, couldn't hear anything that sounded like anything. But all of a sudden, I realized I was hearing something distinct - the rhythmic clicking of the turn signal! This discovery caused both of us to grin and giggle.

I kept the CI on for the rest of the day. I had a bit more work to do at home, and quickly discovered that I was hearing computer sounds fairly distinctly. Many of these, I'd either never heard before, or I'm hearing at a bizarrely amplified level. For example, each click of my mouse makes a small "beep," as does every tap of the keyboard.

Later, at the climbing gym, I realized that I could hear the sound of water running, and that while I couldn't hear music as such, I could tell when it changed from vocals to instrumental solo. At home, Steve called the land line from his cell phone, and I could hear the phone ringing. Or, well, I could hear a long, loud, steady whistle that didn't sound like anything else I'd heard with the CI so far.

This morning, when I turned on the device (while sitting here at my desk), it brought me back to the land of whistles and beeps. I was hearing the computer again, but there also seemed to be some kind of steady whistling in the background. When Steve came in to say goodbye, I realized it had been the shower running across the hall.

To actually function, I need my left-ear hearing aid. I'm still hearing normally with the hearing aid, and having the CI on along with it isn't too distracting or annoying right now. So far, I've been trying to turn my hearing aid off and to focus on what the CI is doing when I'm in a situation where I really don't need to hear anything in particular. I'm already noticing that having the aid and the CI together sounds better, or louder, anyway, than just the hearing aid (and MUCH better than just the CI, at least for now).

Beeps, whistles, water, mouse, phone. Not bad for 12 hours of bionicness.

Comments

[StacyG]

That is fantastic!!