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

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...