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

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 audiology. The first t