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

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...