Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go

Well, jeez.  It's been over two weeks since I posted anything.  That feels like a long time, I guess I've grown used to publicly obsessing over the little details of becoming a ciborg.  Heh. I had an audiology appointment on December 19; we remapped the left side and let the right side stay where it is for now.  We also activated my NEW NEW NEW Rondo 2 processors; these are a different model, just released by Med-El - there's nothing behind the ear, the entire processor is over the implant magnet.  I've been excited to get those, and I think they're going to be great for at least some things.  There are some differences - among other things, they have only one microphone so there's no directional listening capability.  But as I have been in the habit of using the omnidirectional program with my behind-the ear processors, that itself isn't a big deal for me.   But I'll admit I've not been using them all that much.  They sound a little ...

For all the gratitude that I expressed in my last blog post, it's not been easy, starting over again, more or less, with the second CI.  The sound quality went back almost to what it was the first time - the better sound in the first CI couldn't overpower the poor sound in the new one.  Overall, it was better than the second one alone, but not as good as the first - even with the persistent echo. And that's just been how it is.  Each day I get up and put on both processors, and then when I leave for work I'd turn on the sound system in the car and pull the magnet off on the right side, to help with the rehab of the left.  And then when I get to work I use both again, till I get home and put the right one away so when I listen to my husband or the TV or anything else it's just that one, so it could start sounding better.  On weekends I sometimes used some of the aural rehab apps, but not much, because even with the second CI I can understand, it just doesn't so...

It's Thanksgiving week in the U.S. and that leads to thoughts of what we're thankful for.  A friend posts daily on Facebook, each day something new that she's thankful for.  It's a good exercise in perspective; no matter how much rain seems to be falling on your parade there's generally something to be grateful for. For me it's both simple and quite complex.  This year has been a whirlwind, and I've been moving both unimaginably fast and occasionally unbearably slowly toward better hearing with my cochlear implants.  And there is much to be thankful for.  Since it's Thanksgiving week I thought I'd take the opportunity to enumerate them, because the number of people and institutions that I'm thankful for is quite large.  In January of this year I had no idea that I'd qualify for CIs.  How I got here, and that quickly, is still a source of amazement to me. (Note:  I have no one's permission to use their names here so I'll substitute...

I've been working pretty hard on my new CI rehab.  Each day I have to wear both CIs in order to hear well at work, but during my commute I just pull the magnet off on the right side and turn up the left-side volume to the highest volume program my audiologist gave me, and listen to music.  It doesn't sound great, but it's getting better. It's the same when I'm at home, I usually take off the right CI and turn the left one up and just use it - my husband sounds odd but is understandable, and I watch captioned videos while I exercise.  I also spent quite a lot of time between things like laundry watching captioned video last weekend, and did spend some time with one of the rehab apps that I have, but for the most part that just tells me what I already know:  non-fricative consonants are my primary challenge at this point, which is what happened the first time as well.  It will improve. So will the weird floating high-frequency sounds I'm getting in the new CI....

The instructions that I had from my audiologist were to use both CIs at work - and I'd have to anyway, at least at first I'm not getting enough from the new one to be functional - but use just the new one at home so I can push the rehab as much as possible. When I started with the first one I used the word discrimination apps a lot, but I'm not finding that necessary this time.  I've been watching a lot of videos and each day the voices are a bit clearer and that floaty sound that was overpowering the voices when I was first activated is getting less and less prominent and will soon be gone.  It's been gratifying to realize that the rehab is really going quite quickly. But I need volume.  Last time I gradually increased volume - the audiologist programs your map onto all four program buttons and just makes each one a bit louder, so you can gradually increase the volume from nothing, which is what you were used to before, to something near what you'll want it...

Today was the day:  activation!  First I had to meet with my surgeon for a post-op exam ("looks fine") and then I had an appointment with my audiologist to activate the second CI. I kind of drew the short straw when it came to appointment times.  Most of my audiology visits are in the early afternoon, but for whatever reason I ended up with 8:15 with Dr H and 8:30 with audiology.  Because the clinic is on campus at the University, this meant driving into the city during morning rush hour.  Rather than face the worst of it, we got up early and left the house at 6:30.  There was still some traffic, and it took an hour to get there, but there's a little cafe on the first floor and we went there and had breakfast prior to heading upstairs. The appointment with Dr H was, as noted, really short.  She looked at the incision, poked a bit at the implant site, and looked into my ear.  She said everything looks good, I thanked her, and then it was off to...

It's only two weeks since surgery but I couldn't stand my hair any more so I went to get it cut.  The incision is still highly visible, the hair's not grown back much at all where it was shaved, and there's still some suture there above my ear.  It's supposed to be the kind that dissolves but it's taking a long time. Actually, it's been hard for me not to pick at it because at the very top of the incision where Dr. H tied it off there's a little tail of suture about an eighth of an inch long sticking straight out.  So I poke at it and wish it was gone. But the woman that cuts my hair did fine, steering around it all.  She's pretty used to my CI now, and asked me if this was another one.  I said yes, and showed her the bump where the implant is.  It's still more prominent than the first one as there's a bit of swelling yet, but it's feeling pretty good.  This morning after I woke up I actually rolled over onto the left side of my head ...

...till activation, that is.  I'm nine days post-surgery so tomorrow it will be ten days since surgery and ten days till activation. Activation is not going to be the end of this, of course, there will be rehab and unintegrated frequencies just like before, but it's when I can start working on getting both ears hearing properly and then working together.  I'd be willing to start now, but I'm not sure there's a magnet strong enough to hold the coil on my head with the post-surgical swelling. It's not that the swelling is particularly noticeable, but it's definitely there if I reach up and touch the implant site.  But nine days post-surgery, most of the pain is minimal - my neck hardly hurts at all, the incision is mostly itchy, and the implant site only hurts if I put pressure on it (or roll over on it at night). So, not bad, really.  I've caught up on my normal exercise and am ready to go to work tomorrow.  I'm still not used to this business o...

This surgery - and the aftermath of the surgery - feels quite a bit different from the first one.  Some of this may be just because I knew what to expect, but not all. First - and this just about had me cracking up in pre-op.  At my first surgery the nurse had a hard time finding a vein to put my IV in.  I ended up with six or seven extra pin-holes in me before the anesthesiologist finally got the needle in.  This time?  "Oh", said the nurse as she looked down at my arm, "You have GREAT veins".  And got the needle in on the first try.  I think I just proved that "good veins" is a subjective judgment, and is more about the person holding the needle than the veins in question.   Second, I'm in a lot less pain than last time.  Mostly it's at night when I'm lying down sleeping.  If I inadvertently roll over onto the implant site, it hurts quite a lot, but when I'm up it doesn't really hurt at all.  The neck muscles on that side are ...

Done with surgery #2!  I'm a little tired and groggy but feel okay.  The surgery was just about two and a half hours, and I woke up with less pain than last time (which isn't the same as no pain, but I'll take it).   We got home at 4:00 and I took a pain pill and have just slept off the effects of the anesthesia - it's REALLY nice to lose that dizzy feeling - and am going to have a bowl of soup now. So far I can't hear in my newly implanted ear; I don't know yet whether the remaining natural hearing is lost or just temporarily blocked, the surgery result in liquid in the inner ear that will go away in time. But I expected that and am OK either way.  It will be  something to adjust to - I've never been completely deaf before, but I have come to the realization that my natural hearing was not enough to worry about hanging on to.  The last week or so I've been wanting to hear through the CI(s) and get them working together.   Sorry, resi...

I'm just about ready for surgery #2.  I had my pre-op checkup with my doctor on September 28, and have been waiting to hear exactly what time on Friday my surgery is scheduled for. I was in a meeting at 2:00 and didn't hear my cell phone ring - I mean, look, I have never used my cell phone for actual phone calls, and so I've never even set up my voice mail.  All I do is text and email on it.  I can't hear, right?  So I don't use the phone for calls. But I went in and set up my voice mailbox with a password and checked, and sure enough, I had not one but SIX voice mails.  Two were junk calls and one was from my car dealer - and no, I don't want to trade up to a brand new CLA250.  I am quite looking forward to having this one paid off.  But two were from the surgery center and one from my surgeon's office.  I returned those calls and got everything all set up.  We have my surgery scheduled for 11:15 on Friday and I'm all set on what I have ...

Today I was in my car driving to work, and listening to music, as I always do, and a song came on and I started singing along.   And I could.  I mean, sure, I always could, but it sounded really odd - listening to your own voice as it goes through the microphones outside your head is kind of strange at first, and it never sounded great before.  I can't say that it DOES sound great even now - I have no illusions about the quality of my singing.  But I could hear it, and I could hear well enough to sing in tune and have it sound, if not good, at least minimally bad. I mean, this is a commentary on my ability to sing - but it's really a milestone for my CI, the first time I could hear my own voice, have it sound right, and keep my singing in tune.  It was amazing. Expecting to actually sound good is kind of like those old jokes - guy goes to the doctor with a broken leg and asks "doc, will I be able to dance when it heals?"  "Sure!"  says the d...

Last weekend we were invited to Breckenridge, CO by my brother-in-law and his wife.  They were there at a resort and asked us to join them.  We drove to a town in Iowa where there's a train station that's a stop for the California Zephyr and rode the train from there to Denver and were picked up by my brother-in-law and we drove to Breckenridge. What we did there wasn't particularly notable; had dinner, walked around downtown Breckenridge and took the scenic road up Boreas Pass.  The aspens were glorious, golden and beautiful. But when we were leaving my brother-in-law told me how obvious it was that I could hear better, and how nice it was that I could keep up and contribute more to conversations.   A lot of people may have noticed that, but not many other than my husband and a coworker or two have said so.  It was kind of cool to hear it from B, who is someone that I don't even seen annually. And now I'm less than a month from my second surgery....

I work for a company that relies heavily on conference calls.  We're global, we have a matrix organization that requires us to work with our colleagues worldwide, and for most people, the phone is a good way to do that. Me, not so much. But I get invited to calls anyway.  My coping mechanism for most of the last twenty years has been to use the speaker on my office phone and have someone there with me who can let me know what I miss.  Usually there's someone else from my location involved too, but once or twice I've asked people to be there just to help me out, and if they can, they do.  I've mentioned before what a great group of people I work with. Today I got up at my normal (on the late end of office hours) time and was getting ready to get in the car at ten till eight when I happened to check my phone.  I had a notification for a meeting scheduled at 8:00.   Okay, so that's not going to work - it's about 25 minutes for me to get to the office....

Here's an interesting milestone in my CI journey:  I'm going to move into a different office.  For most of the last eight years or so I've been in an office that's next to a room that we use for plant management meetings (so if it's in use I'm likely in there) and to a larger room that we use for training. You can see where this is going, right?  Prior to having the CI I was rarely bothered by noise (even though my office is also next to the door, and when the production employees go off-shift it's somewhat Flintstone-esque in that they're often talking and laughing with each other or on their phones, and often stop at my office door to say good night, which is really nice of them except that I'm frequently trying to concentrate). Is there a rule about parenthetics that are longer than the actual sentence content?   Anyway, lately I've been beyond annoyed by the noise level during training.  Added to that is that the room is also often used...

Today was kind of CI centered, without really being about my hearing at all.   First thing this morning I had my checkup, so I skipped breakfast and hopped over to the doctor's office - for definitions of "hopped over" that include "took a reasonably cumbersome detour because it's road work season in Minnesota.   After the usual preliminaries (height, weight, blood pressure, temp, etc etc) I waited for the doctor to arrive.  When he did, we covered the checkup bit pretty quickly (I'm basically quite healthy) and then he started asking questions.  Turns out I'm his first patient with a CI and he was very interested in the process and we talked for a while about the experience that I've been having.  It makes sense that most people wouldn't have had any contact with the process - I think the current estimate is about 400,000 people worldwide have been implanted, and about half of those in the United States, so as a percentage of the population w...

Like most people with sensorineural hearing loss, I hear higher pitched sounds particularly badly.  I have often struggled to hear women with high-pitched voices.  A few years back I used to have a business colleague whose voice was particularly high-pitched (and her native language is Spanish) and while I had no trouble in person, I couldn't hear her on conference calls even back in the days when I could hear some people on the phone yet. So it's not surprising that I'm still working on higher frequencies.  Many voices sound really good right now, and even, as noted already, some music.  But those pesky high frequencies are still not completely integrated, which makes sound quality less than great for voices with a noticeable high-frequency component. But this is the deal.  I get my mapping, then I rehab, rehab, rehab. I've also been wearing my hearing aid in my left ear, at my audiologist's suggestion.  She wants my left auditory nerve to be getting...

I had an appointment with my audiologist today; remapping (badly needed, I'd gone all echo-y and we got THAT mostly adjusted out) and for my three-month testing to see where I am (and also to confirm that I should proceed with my second surgery). Well.  Where I am is really, really good.  My word comprehension, in the absence of context, last February - with my hearing aids - was 19%.  Today, with the CI alone it was 89% and with the CI and the hearing aid, 92%.   I don't actually wear my hearing aid  anymore, though the audiologist said I should try to wear it between now and my surgery, just to keep my left auditory nerve active.  But it did help a bit.  Apparently the average score at 3 months is around 60% so even though I felt like I got a slow start, I'm really getting a lot of benefit from this, and when I get my second CI it can only get better! This is just wonderful news.  I knew it was better - how could I not?  But I don't k...

So now that I have my second surgery scheduled I thought I might try wearing my hearing aid in my left ear for a while.  My audiologist had suggested that it would be a good idea to stimulate my left auditory nerve for a while. I may try it again, but when I tried it yesterday it seemed like nothing.  I mean, my left ear with that hearing aid was my entire entry into sound until May, and it sounded remarkably insignificant.  It was amazing.  This is how much my standard for hearing has already improved. With my CI I am not even close to normal hearing.  Among other things, I'm in dire need of a remapping (and have one scheduled for Tuesday).  But even with the oddities (mostly echoes and some tinniness) I can hear an order of magnitude better than I could with the hearing aid. I knew that, but the practical demonstration still took me aback.  It's an odd feeling, but definitely validates my decision to proceed with my second ear.   Even thou...

Got my second surgery date yesterday:  October 12.  It's farther away than I hoped, but not bad really.  Six months between surgeries is pretty much exactly what is generally recommended and it's almost precisely that. It also gives me a little more time to make progress with the first CI.  I have a remapping on Tuesday next week, and need it, I have echoes and still some residual tinniness, though K was able to reduce that significantly last time, so I have hopes that we can make some changes that help next week. But then I'm not scheduled for another appointment till November, and I think I'm going to want something in between.  I can ask on Tuesday.  I can't tell, from the discussions on the forum if my progress is slow or merely average; some people say things didn't really start being clear till the six-month mark and others at a year or so.  It's somewhat immaterial; as long as I can see progress I'm comfortable with the process now. But wi...

I have been waiting, with my usual lack of patience, to hear from my surgeon about my second surgery.  After I met with my audiologist and she agreed with me that it was time, she met with the surgeon and she also agreed. But the clinic requires advance authorization from insurance (which, given the cost of the procedure, I understand completely) and so it was submitted, and we all began to wait. Now, not only was I approved for bilateral implants way back in March, but I also have a letter from the insurance company stating that I don't have to get advance authorization and that my clinic is in-network.  But did that prevent my from getting all wound up about the wait?   Did it hell. So I've been getting increasingly nervous throughout the last week or so even though I knew better.  But today when I got home there was a message on the phone.  I asked R to listen to it for me and sure enough, it was Dr. H's office saying the authorization came through an...

One of the things that I was worried about, at the beginning of this whole process, was making the transition from the extremely quiet world I've been living in for fifteen to twenty years to a much louder one.   I wasn't used to being able to hear, and though I had to work at it in order to function on a professional level, when I wasn't at work I just more or less embraced the silence.  I came to dislike sudden loud noises.   I never even tried to hear movies or TV or the radio (not that it would have done any good to try, of course) or the telephone.  I just lived in an increasingly quiet world.   I never knew that my cat Spike actually meows really loudly (and insistently, though he's never all that clear on what it is he's insisting on).  I never heard my kitchen clock.  Never heard all kinds of things that I've since been rediscovering with my CI. And I'm learning that it's not really something that I should have feared.  It seems...

Today I had two appointments at the U:  one with the Med-El rep, and I was able to see and handle the Rondo2 one-piece processor and it's wonderfully light and compact.  Add to that the fact that its rechargeable battery lasts twice as long as the ones with my behind-the-ear processor and I'm really excited to get this.  I'm told it will be mid-to-late fall in the US.  The device has receipted premarket approval from FDA but the programming software hasn't been approved yet.  Step 1 and step 2, but still, it means a wait. But that's actually good for me.  My second appointment was with my audiologist, and we did remap and reprogram, but we also discussed (further) getting me in to meet with the surgeon to schedule my second surgery.  We have a tentative appointment for me in the second week of August but K is also going to check with Dr H and see if there's any time earlier than that.  And if we schedule my surgery and order the devices before t...

I had a dental appointment today, just a regular checkup and cleaning (no cavities!  As I told the dentist, I kind of figure I'm entitled to have something that works properly, and I guess my teeth are it).   But while the hygienist was cleaning my teeth I realized that I could hear the noise that the little metal implement makes when they scrape the teeth to clean them.  It's not exactly music but it's today's milestone, though I'm still kind of bemused by some of my earlier ones.  I opened a bottle of sparkling water today and sat and listened to it decompress for at least a minute, and then while my teeth were being cleaned I was listening to all the beeps and background noises at the dentist.  My dentist does cleanings and checkups in an area that has divider but not four actual walls (you do get a room with walls for fillings or crowns or whatever) and I could hear people talking in the other cubicles and occasionally even understood a few words....

I just realized that it's been over a week since I posted anything.  This is actually fairly indicative of the stage in this process I'm in:  rehab, rehab, rehab.   Mapping. Rehab, rehab, rehab. It's like that.   I had a new mapping last week, and we added some volume to the midrange frequencies which added some fullness to what I'm hearing but it is no longer the program that I've got my brain trained to, so the echoing has returned.  I spent most of the July 4 holiday (and I have to say, Wednesday holidays are really weird, the whole structure of the week feels off) doing rehab:  audiobooks, some TV and a movie with captions, followed by some drills on one of the CI rehab apps.  It all helps, but it's also slow going.  I still hear the echo, though I think it's slowly receding. It's a long process and this is how it goes:  some days there's no apparent milestone.  Incremental progress is often not even noticeable. Anothe...

Today I had an appointment with a person that I think is called an aural rehab specialist.  She's all about speech recognition.  She gave me some new resources for rehab, and did a short (pretty small sample) speech recognition test.  Even allowing for the small sample, I was really happy with the result - 70%  I was at 19% before getting the CI. I also had a remapping and we added some volume in the midranges, and that's helped a lot too, even right away some things were sounding better.   This was a remarkably good day for my hearing. And we're nearly done with our audit at work, which will be great to have in the rear-view mirror.  

I'm the site lead for our ERP deployment, and have to have update meetings with the leads from our business team.  On Friday I was scheduled to have one with two guys who are in St Paul on the main HQ campus.  The company uses conference calls a lot, but I, of course, struggle at the best of times.  And though I've started to understand pretty well in person I'm still not hearing a thing on the phone. So I did what I always do:  told them exactly what I'd be dealing with.  I sent a reply to the organizer and said, "I just got a cochlear implant this spring, and I'm not far enough along in my rehab to hear on the phone yet.  Do you mind if we do an IM chat instead?"  I thought he would.  Most people do, when asked.  But I didn't anticipate that he would be EXCITED for me.  Turns out that he had a friend who had a CI and he knows the process and, well, he was just incredibly supportive.  He re-sent the meeting invitation and said ...

Today was... I don't even know if this is possible.  I'm a little afraid to talk about it for fear I'll wake up in the morning and find it's gone back. But for now - this morning I got up and went to work and everything seemed much as it has been.  My music in the car sounded pretty rough, and people in my morning meetings seemed whispery or beepy or whatever, just as they have.  And then in midafternoon I was outside one of our buildings talking to a co-worker, and he sounded normal.  I didn't have to focus to hear and we were just standing there talking.  And later on, others were sounding more normal too.  And at dinner my husband sounded not only more normal but even a little bit louder.  I mean, right now he's talking to someone on the phone in the living room and I'm in the next room and not only am I hearing his voice but I can understand his side of the conversation .  I don't think that's EVER happened before. And I got on the tre...

For some fifteen years or more I've been a member of an online discussion group for readers and writers of mystery fiction.  It started out as a Usenet newsgroup, and migrated over to Facebook when so many ISPs stopped offering access (and, not incidentally, when a lot of the newsgroups more or less imploded under the weight of the trollery.  Eternal September indeed). It was, and is, an interesting group.  We don't share all of our opinions or likes and dislikes, but we love our mystery fiction and we can be fiercely loyal to each other. One of the people in that group was a guy called Jeff.  He was a big teddy bear of a guy, smart and funny and sarcastic - but kind too, and a huge, huge fan of the sports teams of Syracuse University, so much so that he was called Orangedood.  In fact, I'd never have actually bet that orange toilets existed until I learned (and saw a photo of) the one that Jeff had in the basement bathroom of his and his wife's house. ...

I took a week's vacation this week and we took our popup camper up to my brother's cabin.  He is surrounded by thirty acres of unoccupied forest, so it's quiet and the only people we saw all week were ourselves, my brother on the weekend, and on Wednesday we drove into town for lunch and to replenish some critical items (ice and water, the basics.) So I wasn't talking to as many people, just my husband and brother, but we have a portable solar panel that kept me able to do my rehab.  I listened to an audiobook.  I enjoyed it, but was a bit put off by the reader.  He had some pronunciation quirks, and got the cadence of the author's writing wrong.  When I read, it's like hearing the author speak.  The rhythm and pacing is there, in my head.  This guy just got it wrong, and it pulled me out of the narrative on a fairly regular basis. On the other hand, I could hear well and by the end of the book could hear without following along in the print book....

I've been able to avoid using my hearing aid lately .  We were supposed to have our ISO audit this week, but it was postponed, so I have left my hearing aid out and just let  people repeat things occasionally.  I think it's helping, I'm forcing my brain to use the CI and it's resulting in some progress. Two things I noticed on my commute today.  I listen to music in the car, and while in general it sounds pretty appalling and beepy, I've begun to notice that some songs just sound fuller, more expansive, as though the music fills my head rather than just playing out there.  More body, if that makes sense.  I suspect it's the quality of the mp3 file (I have a USB port in the car and have a thumb drive with several hundred songs on it, and some are commercial mp3s and others are from CDs that I ripped myself, and I've never used anything but free software for that, and I imagine that's the difference I'm hearing.  I never noticed it with my hearing ...

I was talking to a guy at work yesterday - he's an EAP specialist, helping people navigate our benefits, and has been sort of cheering me on all along in my CI journey. He stopped in my office and was asking how it was going.  I told him that I'm not, for the most part, using my hearing aids any more and it's pretty much okay, but people still sound odd (though there are some people - men - whose voices are exactly in some kind of sweet spot and they - two of them, in this morning's meeting - sound normal already.  The other 217 people in the plant, not so much yet).   I was telling R how people sound - the mix of somewhat normal voice and the beepy sounds that the higher frequencies still sound like to me, and in the course of the conversation I realized that some women's voices may never sound to me like the did before, because I wasn't hearing higher frequencies well.  Once I get to clarity, voices that fall in the higher frequency could sound considerabl...

Today was my third mapping session.  (The title of this post doesn't make any sense other than maps, and here be dragons goes on maps.  Not on electronic mapping of a CI's electrical impulses, but so what?  It's my party and I'll pun if I want to!) I'm exactly three weeks post-activation today.   The first map of a CI is pretty much just "turn it on and see how much volume you can tolerate".  The programming is standard - you can't really personalize it until you start adjusting to hearing sounds in a way that you previously were unable to do, and in an ear that almost certainly wasn't hearing much at all before.  So the first week you just get used to the sounds, and they may or may not sound much like voices at this point.  Second week, more volume but not much more. But now I'm starting to use the CI for real.  This week I haven't been wearing my hearing aid.  It didn't seem like a big deal when I left it out.  I can hear with th...

I've been a little frustrated this week; the beeps and breathiness have made it hard to use the CI alone without the hearing aid, and yet if I don't, my progress will probably be slower.  So when I'm meeting with people individually at work, I just take the hearing aid out and pay close attention and usually it's okay, even though the people sound peculiar and wrong. But actual meetings with groups are right out.  I have to use the hearing aid then.  And aside from that, I'm *tired* of beeps and  the lack of clarity.  And seriously, this thing SLAUGHTERS music.  But the music is part of my rehab, and so I listen.  But this afternoon while I was doing some sound recognition drills on my rehab program, I realized that the voices were at least a little bit clearer.  Not normal by any means, and not even remotely what I'd call clear, but a bit better. Then I got up and did some things in the kitchen - cleared up the lunch dishes and made some ...

Today was a good day (setting aside the fact that I have a 7:30 meeting every Tuesday, and I really really struggle with getting up that early).  But the pain from the pressure of my processor on the incision site was considerably less than it has been. I attribute this to the fact that I just spent a couple hundred bucks on a pair of glasses with thinner earpieces and a handful of scarves to use as headbands.  At least I got the glasses at Costco so it was only a couple hundred dollars.   And it's still worth it.  It was really really nice to be in a meeting late this afternoon and not only not be in pain, but I pulled out my hearing aid and spoke to the guy I was meeting with using only my CI.  He didn't sound right, and to be honest I'm really tired of this beepy shit. But I was able to hear him, if not the people on the phone, and we got through the meeting.   And on the way home I was getting frustrated because the music I was listening to se...

I've been experiencing some improvements in my hearing with the CI; yesterday I had a meeting with two people in a small room and was able to hear well enough to do the whole thing without my hearing aid in the left ear.  This is a big thing, hearing for a meeting from the right side!  All my impulses about presenting my left side to whoever's speaking are going to have to be retrained. I can also hear my DVDs when I'm on the treadmill better, the voices aren't as beepy as they were.  The theme music still sounds pretty bad, but that will come.  I can do fine at home talking to R one on one as well.  It feels like things are going well, and the path forward looks really  positive.  I need to achieve quite a lot more clarity before I can schedule the second surgery, but I can see it coming now. Aside from trying to function without my hearing aid and doing my rehab via music listening and TV-watching, most of my activity around the CI this week were...