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

  Winter arrived this morning.  It began with freezing drizzle and is now cold enough to snow.  Not a lot of accumulation yet, but we've hours to go according to the forecast. And the wind is incredibly strong.  Our flag is spinning almost straight up like a whirlwind.  I can hear the wind moan as it whips around the house, and I can hear the sandblast-like sound of the snow and ice pellets hitting the house. I mean, on the one hand I can hear all that, and on the other, well, at least I don't have to leave the house till Monday.

  And here we are in December.  It's been such an odd year, I guess another oddity shouldn't be surprising.  It's nothing related to anything else (so far as I know) but it was annoying. I have tinnitus.  My ears have been ringing since 1973.  Usually it's pretty much stable, it's the same ringing at a manageable volume, for all that time.  Once in a while I get a different sound but it passes and gets back to the usual ring.  When I have my processors on and get external sound it's essentially not there; so it's really just a nighttime phenomenon.  But I'm used to it and it's not usually a big deal. Last night was bad, though.  The volume was much higher than I remember it being before, loud enough that it kept me awake much of the night.  It was Friday night so I didn't have to work today, but still.  A nuisance, and I'm not particularly fond of lying awake and trying to fall asleep for hours. Earlier this evening I got on my treadmill; whe

It's been a strange year, 2020.  Covid-19 has prevented a lot of things:  travel, restaurant meals, seeing people.  Between October of last year and February of this year I was in the new house part of the week and in the old house part of the week.  Then in February my husband (and our cat) moved to the new house with me, so at least we're together.  But since they moved out here we've had a chance to visit relatively few people.  My brother came to dinner one night in May, and a friend later that summer.  Another friend in late summer (she had to wait till her dog recovered from surgery) and two more friends in September.  And my brother-in-law and his wife last week.  So, 7 people since the beginning the year, basically.  And though I do go to work, I spend a lot of time in my office with the door shut.  We have very few in-person meetings, and the ones we do have we're required to sit distanced and wear masks and so forth. So we do a lot of meetings on MS Teams.  I

So, it's Saturday morning, and I did what I usually do:  slept late.  Stayed in bed even later, because my cat was sleeping between my side and my elbow and it's illegal to move your cat when she's comfortable, sleeping, and cute. But eventually I got up.  Went upstairs (we have a weird house, our bedroom and a bunch of living space is below the kitchen and living room and some other rooms).  And I made coffee, opened the shades on the glass door, and am sitting here looking out past our yard and the the soybeans and the cornfield to the trees along the creek, and it's quiet and peaceful and beautiful.   But very quiet.  My processors are on the table rather than on my head.  As much as I love hearing, and for the most part I want to hear everything there is (though honestly, I never knew how much noise my husband makes when he's cooking).  But it's cool, and I even enjoy the snippets of conversation that I overhead when I walk through the cube farm near my

Med-El, the manufacturer of my CIs, has a forum on their website for CI recipients, and potential CI recipients.  It's mostly people who've been implanted with Med-El products, but a lot of people who've just learned that they're candidates come there and ask questions, and there are a couple of people with AB or CA products as well.  It's not a problem, it's all about providing people with a chance to ask questions and learn how others dealt with the process of learning to hear this way. And in the process, a lot of the people who post there regularly start to feel like a community.  It's an international group - lots of Americans and Canadians but people from all over the EU as well, and some Australians. A week or two ago one of the women suggested an online chat.  I immediately recoiled, because anything like talking on the phone has been a source of frustration for me for most of the last twenty years.  But I decided to give it a try, because I'

Generally, the first six months after receiving CIs involve many and frequent audiologist appointments.  But by May of last year I was past that stage and was planning to go in and have an appointment every six months. Last time I actually regretted doing the re-mapping - it had been sounding really good, and I knew that each time we change the mapping it takes my brain a long time to get that back.  In fact, I'm just now getting back to the same sound quality that I had last October before we did the new mapping. So I had been planning to ask my audiologist not to re-map.  Usually she checks the electrode function and we discuss how things are going, but basically the mapping is the primary function of the visit.  But I was going to go in, make sure everything else is okay, and then ask her not to re-map, which I know is okay because we talked about it last time. But my appointment was for next Tuesday.  I don't know if the state will be lifting the shelter in place requ

Despite shelter in place, my workplace is still operating.  We're a manufacturing site and considered essential.  Many individuals are working from home (I haven't, yet - it's really easy for me to drive there, go in, shut my office door and be socially distanced). But all of our meetings are phone meetings now.  This has, for most of my life, sucked deeply.  And on the first Monday when we had a phone meeting first thing I tried the speaker on my regular office phone and indeed.  Sucked. But I have a neckloop, a Bluetooth device that pairs with my cell phone and transmits to the CI telecoil.  And it's clear.  Back when I was listening to audiobooks as rehab I used it quite a lot but it's been in a carrying case in the backpack that I take to work for a while now, hibernating until it was needed. So when I realized that I was probably going to have to give it a try I got it out, charged it up and dialed into the next call and - hey.  I could hear most people. 

I was scheduled to go to Durham, NC where Med-El has its North American headquarters for the week of March 30th; they conduct research there that supports development of the next generation of cochlear implants and CI recipients go there for a week of testing.  It's a chance to make a contribution as well as a chance to visit the company that gave us our hearing back. My bad luck was to have scheduled my research week during what turned out to be a global pandemic.  Med-El has cancelled all corporate visits for the next month (which is extremely common, my employer has done so as well) and since the research was scheduled out through the end of the year, it's unlikely that I'll be able to do this in 2020. It's deeply disappointing - call me a geek, but I was really looking forward to being able to combine learning more about the technology in my head and paying it forward to new recipients and to Med-El. And yes, I know - if that's the worst thing that happens

It's interesting.  I always knew that people said things in passing, and often had little exchanges as they walked by each other.  I could never hear it when people said things to me, so they all probably thought I was unsociable or something. But now I can do that.  I went out to run an errand at noon and there was a guy walking into the plant when I walked out - not someone I know, but he works there (I work at a site with 1600 people).  And as we passed in the parking lot, he said "This is making my teeth hurt!"  - referring to the temperature, which was something like -7 at the time.  It's since soared to -4, so thank goodness that's over. But I could hear!  And respond.  I just said, "And your nose, and your chin...." and then we were too far apart for talking anymore. So that one brief exchange made me outlandishly happy, all the way to Menards and my exchange there with a surly and uninformed employee. Because it's really incredibly co

Last week I had some pain at my implant site.  Usually I just wait for things to go away, and I actually did wait four or five days with this.  But it didn't go away, so I made an appointment with my CI surgeon, and today was the first available appointment time I could have. Naturally, over the weekend the pain receded and it really only hurts now if I poke at it.  But I went anyway, because it's my CI and my hearing and, you know, my head.   It snowed today so it took me an hour and a half to get into Minneapolis, and then Dr. Huang looked at it and said, well that looks great, I don't see a thing wrong here.  She said she could take a CT scan but completely expected it to be clean. Okay, but any idea what could have caused it?  Well, she said, can't say for sure, but there are a lot of really big muscles right under your ear there (they  hold your head up), and maybe you had a muscle spasm or something that created an ache right at the base of the implant. So

Today we went out to our new house and spent the day there.  We'd ordered a chest of drawers and a dresser and had to schlep them from the living room to the room they go in, which meant stairs.  Once we got them in the right spots and the drawers in, and even some sweaters in, we went on to other things that needed doing. My husband was wiring a new switch in the mudroom - we needed an outlet, since there wasn't one, and he was bothered because the garage lights have to be turned out from switches in the garage and he wanted one in the mudroom.  He also wired an outlet to the switch and put a nightlight (shaped like a rubber ducky, we're just classy as hell) so that if the duck is lit up, we'd know we left the lights on in the garage and we could switch them off from inside the house. But this involved pushing a wire from downstairs up through the wall.  So he asked me to stand in the mudroom and wait for the wire to appear, and pull it up.  He went downstairs and