Ramblings

Twice in the last two weeks I've had people ask me about my CIs - how are they different from hearing aids and how do they work.  It's happened before, but not all that frequently, but I suspect that as they get a bit more common, people become curious and wonder what the deal is.

So I explain, in fairly general terms, how the implant is surgically installed in our heads, and then in even more general terms, now the electronic signal goes from the microphones on the speech processors in to the auditory nerve and what a revelation it is when it turns out to work, and you find that you can hear better than you expected to ever hear again.  

Within the restraints of how much time we have, of course - one of these people was a young woman working checkout at the supermarket (and no, there wasn't anyone behind me) and the other was a guy who runs a nice cafe we sometimes go to in our county town.  It's fun for me - I like talking about this and what a great thing it is, and if people learn about them, well, maybe they'll know someone who might benefit.

And then amid all my admiration for human brain plasticity and the way we can learn to hear based on electronic signals rather than physical sound waves, I keep running into things that my subconscious (not my brain, this is psychological stuff) can still not get over, even after all these years.

Like the business with my fear and loathing for phone calls.   I had a discussion earlier this year with one of the audiologists doing research at the University of Minnesota about this, and it's evidently very common - it's really hard to convince yourself that it's going to be easy to hear on the phone now - and particularly so since it's actually not all that consistently easy.  People who speak clearly and at a reasonable volume, sure, I've had success.  But so many people mumble and hold the phone so the mic's not anywhere near them, and yikes.  No.

And then the other thing, which came up again today, is alarm clocks.  I have one of those alarm clocks with a shaker on it, so you can stick this little puck-like thing under your mattress or pillow and when the alarm goes, instead of a noise you get shaking till you wake up.  I've had this alarm for twenty-five years at least - I used to travel a lot for business, and needed to be able to ensure I'd get to meetings on time.

Guess when that alarm actually woke me up for the first time?  Five years ago.  In this house, actually, when my husband was still in our old house (long, weird story, we had two houses for a while).  And the shaker went off and I woke up and peeled myself off the ceiling.

But generally what happens, and happened consistently for the previous twenty years (and also for the subsequent five years since) is that my brain, or subconscious or whatever it is, won't let me sleep till the alarm goes off.  Not even close.  This morning I had to get up at seven (which is JUST AWFUL for a retiree) to drop my cat off at the vet for some dental work, and so I set my alarm and went to sleep.  But no.  I woke up at 5:00 and watched the numbers on the clock change.  I'd love to learn to sleep till the alarm goes off, and now that I know it will wake me up, I'd love to know why something in my head keeps waking me up early.  If I were conscious when all this was happening I'd think that it was not wanting to make my husband up, because he's a night owl and at 5:00 am has often only been asleep for a couple of hours.  And that could be what drives it anyway, who knows?  But it's kind of annoying to lose that much extra sleep because my cat needs his teeth cleaned.

But here we are.  Spot's teeth look great now.  And I may be in bed by nine.