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

  You know, a lot of people like to complain about the internet, and especially social media, and there's certainly a lot to complain about.  But there are some things that it provides that we never had before, and one of those things is our ability to interact with people that we would never otherwise meet. Years ago a friend tipped me off that there was a blog she was having fun with.  It was a woman in Canada who wrote the blog as though her cat was writing it, and if you kept up with it long enough you would swear that you'd come to know Mojo and could recognize his "voice" from his blog.  As time went on several of us began to participate in the comments in the voice of our own cats (and in one case, a dog, and some bugs).  It became a sort of social media for cats, and it just worked.  Sure, it was silly, but it was fun, and we more or less got to know each other that way. Then back in 2018 I learned that I was a candidate for cochlear implants, and o...

This morning I woke up when my alarm buzzer went off.  This is unusual because:  1. It was an hour earlier than I'd actually set the alarm for  2. I nearly hit the ceiling - my heart was racing, I was breathing fast  3. But mostly?  I CAN'T HEAR THE ALARM.   In fact, I've never heard it, don't have any idea what it sounds like.  If it goes off when my husband is home, he wakes me up when he hears it.  If he's not home I use the shaker and it shakes me awake. I'm pretty sure that I dreamed that I woke up to the sound of my alarm, and the alarm in the dream really woke me up.  It was bizarre. 

  This week I had the chance to visit the U.S. office of the company that makes my cochlear implants.  The company's headquarters are in Austria, but the have an office here and one of the groups in the office is a research & development group - small, just four people (really, really smart people) who work on ways to improve hearing for their customers.   And the way they do that is by having people who are implanted come in and do a week of tests.  The tests aren't diagnostic, but the responses of the subjects provide that data that will either support the hypothesis being tested (preferred) or not (but even then they generally learn things). I volunteered to do this in 2020 and was scheduled to go there in March.  Yep, that March, when the first round of COVID shutdowns occurred.  Cancellation.  I was disappointed, but didn't actually feel the need to expose myself to more Covid than necessary - keep in mind this was well before the vaccine...

  Four years ago today I posted this on Facebook: Big day today. I'll be at the University of Minnesota medical center pretty much all day, starting with an appointment with the CI audiologist, followed by a CT scan of my head, and then an appointment with the ENT surgeon. And that's when my journey began.  That first day in 2018 I was excited for the possibilities but didn't really know what to expect.  And I was afraid for quite a while because my surgeon told me there was a 50/50 chance that I would lose my residual natural hearing as a result of the surgery. Which, as it turns out, was true.  I did, I don't hear anything without my processors anymore.  But with them - with them, the world has opened up. I remember hearing my cat purr.  I remember hearing cicadas outside the plant at work and having to ask a co-worker what that sound was.  "Cicadas, you know, it's that time of year" said Joe.  Well, I had no way to know.  Bird song....

  I have a strange question.  My husband collects model trains, and he recently bought a set of boxcars from Germany with chewing-gum logos on the sides.  And they arrived packed with actual gum. Now, I don't normally chew gum, but I do like mints after coffee, and this is spearmint, so I thought what the heck, ought to work.  But although the mint part works, this is quite annoying.  I mean to say, do people with normal hearing actually hear the gum squeak against their teeth?  Because if so, how does it not drive you crazy? Back to Tic-Tacs for me.

  When I was implanted, I received my first CI in my worst ear - my right ear hadn't heard much at all for years.  I did have a hearing aid in it, but mostly that served to bring my sounds from the right side of me (my hearing aids talked to each other, as though there was a little wifi bubble around my head).  But there really wasn't anything there. When I had my second surgery, we were implanting the ear with all of my residual natural hearing.  This worried me a bit, as my friends who've been reading this for some time will recall (and that is putting it mildly, as they'll also recall).  But I was hearing so much better with the CI that I realized, finally, that my residual natural hearing wasn't worth worrying about.  The surgeon told me that there was a 50/50 chance that I'd lose what hearing I had in that ear when we implanted it, and I figured, yeah, OK.  I'm not losing much. Afterward I was focused on rehab for a long time, and didn't think abo...

  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.