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

  Last week I received an email from the woman at the University that I've worked with on several studies regarding the interface between cochlear implants and their users.  She wanted to refer me to another team at the U - in a different department, but doing somewhat related work. So I said yes.  As I said to the team at the U today, I will always say yes, unless I absolutely cannot.  I'll go to the University, and I'll spend the time, because anything I can do to help make cochlear implants work better will be a tiny  - not a repayment, really, but a paying forward, for the incredibly beneficial impact these devices have had on my life.   So I drive to the University campus -- which is no longer a small thing - the best case is that the drive will be an hour and a half in each direction, and in this case, the team I was going to work with was in Elliot Hall, the Psych department, which doesn't have a parking lot.  I, a 1981 graduate of the Univ...

Since I received my cochlear implants, I've had no residual natural hearing.  I'm completely deaf, except that with my implants I hear better than I have in years. But I don't sleep with them, which is fine - I'm not usually talking to anyone while I'm asleep anyway (though my husband informs me that I was talking in my sleep the other night - first time that's happened, that I'm aware of). But in my dreams, I can hear.  I don't know if my brain thinks I can still hear unassisted or what, but it's kind of cool, it's the only time I can be like everyone else.  The fact that it's never when I'm conscious is unfortunate, but there we are.  I use my CIs and it's fine. But last night I had a dream in which, for the first time, I had cochlear implants.  In the dream, I didn't have my processors, though, and I could still hear, so if this is my brain adjusting to the reality of what happened eight years ago, it's doing it in an add a...