a new year
One year ago today - at this time exactly, I was in the operating room at the University of Minnesota clinic surgery center, having my first CI implanted.
This was momentous. When I woke up after surgery, it was a whole new world, though I didn't really start experiencing it till after activation. Since then I've learned to listen with my CI, received my second implant, learned to listen with that one, and then began working with the two of them together.
And it's amazing. I've been rabbitting on in this blog for over a year now about how astounding it all is and what a change it's been, but it seriously cannot be understated. I had been getting progressively more hard of hearing since birth; in recent years my ability to navigate the world was becoming more and more restricted and I was, to a significant degree, isolated by my inability to hear.
Now, due to losing my remaining natural hearing in surgery, I'm almost completely deaf. And I hear better than I have in - well, probably twenty years. My ability to understand speech is orders of magnitude better than it was one year and one day ago.
No, it doesn't sound perfect. But we're working on that, and meantime I'm far more functional at work, at home with R, and out and about with friends. I have those little exchanges with supermarket checkout people that other people have. I can hear well enough to be annoyed by those dumbass gas station TV screens and put them on mute. I can hear my cat meow and purr. I'm even starting to hear on the phone again.
People often talk about wanting to live in eras other than their own. Nostalgia takes some odd forms, but this is the biggest one, to me: the biosciences have progressed incredibly far in the last fifty years. People often live for a long time with cardiac disease, with pacemakers and stents and angioplasty balloons. Surgeries that used to be major traumas are often outpatient now. People lose legs and get prostheses that allow them to run races. Our teeth, with care, don't have to be replaced by dentures.
And people who lose their hearing can regain it. I love history. I'd go back and visit quite a few places and times that I can think of in a heartbeat if it were possible. But I'm also aware that even fairly recently - in my lifetime - people with hearing as poor as mine would simply have to give up all those normal interactions and would be employable only under restricted circumstances.
I'm so glad I'm living now and have been lucky enough to receive this technology. I'm grateful for science and the advances seen in my lifetime, and specifically, for the work done by Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair.
I have my life back.
This was momentous. When I woke up after surgery, it was a whole new world, though I didn't really start experiencing it till after activation. Since then I've learned to listen with my CI, received my second implant, learned to listen with that one, and then began working with the two of them together.
And it's amazing. I've been rabbitting on in this blog for over a year now about how astounding it all is and what a change it's been, but it seriously cannot be understated. I had been getting progressively more hard of hearing since birth; in recent years my ability to navigate the world was becoming more and more restricted and I was, to a significant degree, isolated by my inability to hear.
Now, due to losing my remaining natural hearing in surgery, I'm almost completely deaf. And I hear better than I have in - well, probably twenty years. My ability to understand speech is orders of magnitude better than it was one year and one day ago.
No, it doesn't sound perfect. But we're working on that, and meantime I'm far more functional at work, at home with R, and out and about with friends. I have those little exchanges with supermarket checkout people that other people have. I can hear well enough to be annoyed by those dumbass gas station TV screens and put them on mute. I can hear my cat meow and purr. I'm even starting to hear on the phone again.
People often talk about wanting to live in eras other than their own. Nostalgia takes some odd forms, but this is the biggest one, to me: the biosciences have progressed incredibly far in the last fifty years. People often live for a long time with cardiac disease, with pacemakers and stents and angioplasty balloons. Surgeries that used to be major traumas are often outpatient now. People lose legs and get prostheses that allow them to run races. Our teeth, with care, don't have to be replaced by dentures.
And people who lose their hearing can regain it. I love history. I'd go back and visit quite a few places and times that I can think of in a heartbeat if it were possible. But I'm also aware that even fairly recently - in my lifetime - people with hearing as poor as mine would simply have to give up all those normal interactions and would be employable only under restricted circumstances.
I'm so glad I'm living now and have been lucky enough to receive this technology. I'm grateful for science and the advances seen in my lifetime, and specifically, for the work done by Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair.
I have my life back.
Comments
Post a Comment