progress
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. It's similar to the Mickey Mouse beeps I had with the first one, but not really the same - I think of it as a different shape. Sounds do have shapes to me, but when I try to describe what I mean I don't seem to be able to do it. In any case, those are getting better too and I'm looking forward to when the voices and sounds are integrated on both sides.
Because this is going to start sounding great. I can tell already.
Meantime, last night we had a happy hour for a colleague who's retiring. There were people there that I haven't seen for anything from a year to fifteen years, and there were some questions about those things on my head. Most people are interested to hear what it's all about, and were happy for me.
And what I found really interesting is that the get-together that was held at work in the afternoon before we went to the bar, almost everyone there - even people I haven't spoken to for a couple of years - had heard about this. It's surprising to me that people talk about me that much, but apparently cochlear implants are unusual enough that people have in fact been talking about it (or me). I told some of them the story about how my device's predecessor - ancestor, if you will - is a device developed by our company in conjunction with the University of Vienna in Austria in the mid 1980s.
It's true. We exited the business in the late 80s, but the work done on that very early CI was a direct influence on the device that MED-EL made and that's in my head right now.
The world isn't such a big place.
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. It's similar to the Mickey Mouse beeps I had with the first one, but not really the same - I think of it as a different shape. Sounds do have shapes to me, but when I try to describe what I mean I don't seem to be able to do it. In any case, those are getting better too and I'm looking forward to when the voices and sounds are integrated on both sides.
Because this is going to start sounding great. I can tell already.
Meantime, last night we had a happy hour for a colleague who's retiring. There were people there that I haven't seen for anything from a year to fifteen years, and there were some questions about those things on my head. Most people are interested to hear what it's all about, and were happy for me.
And what I found really interesting is that the get-together that was held at work in the afternoon before we went to the bar, almost everyone there - even people I haven't spoken to for a couple of years - had heard about this. It's surprising to me that people talk about me that much, but apparently cochlear implants are unusual enough that people have in fact been talking about it (or me). I told some of them the story about how my device's predecessor - ancestor, if you will - is a device developed by our company in conjunction with the University of Vienna in Austria in the mid 1980s.
It's true. We exited the business in the late 80s, but the work done on that very early CI was a direct influence on the device that MED-EL made and that's in my head right now.
The world isn't such a big place.
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