say what?
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 considerably different than I've been used to, because now I *will* hear the high frequencies.
You'd think that I'd have thought of this already - it's reasonably obvious, once you think about it, but I guess I've been so focused on achieving sound quality that I didn't really think about the fact that this isn't necessarily going to sound like voices used to sound. Even men whose voices are more in the tenor range may sound different.
It's interesting, anyway. Not weird or alarming or anything like that. I don't have much invested in getting back to my pre-implant hearing, because if my pre-implant hearing had been adequate I wouldn't have the implant. But I'll be curious to get to the point where the sounds are properly integrated so I can learn what my female friends and co-workers sound like!
Because I'm pretty sure that they don't normally sound like Minnie Mouse.
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 considerably different than I've been used to, because now I *will* hear the high frequencies.
You'd think that I'd have thought of this already - it's reasonably obvious, once you think about it, but I guess I've been so focused on achieving sound quality that I didn't really think about the fact that this isn't necessarily going to sound like voices used to sound. Even men whose voices are more in the tenor range may sound different.
It's interesting, anyway. Not weird or alarming or anything like that. I don't have much invested in getting back to my pre-implant hearing, because if my pre-implant hearing had been adequate I wouldn't have the implant. But I'll be curious to get to the point where the sounds are properly integrated so I can learn what my female friends and co-workers sound like!
Because I'm pretty sure that they don't normally sound like Minnie Mouse.
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