I just had two moments of hearing that I've missed in the past several months. While I'm not yet used to the way my cochlear implant sounds, I'm starting to recognize some things.
I had it turned on this morning, my appointment set for 9:30. Dana, my audiologist, called me into her office and sat me down, where she promptly hooked my head up to the speech processor. First things first: getting my map set up. MAP doesn't stand for anything, they just call it a map for some reason. Thus the lower case. She tested out the electrodes and told me to count the amount of beeps I was hearing (i.e. one, three, two, four, etc) at different pitches starting with low. At first, I was afraid my implant wasn't working because I wasn't hearing anything, but then I started hearing beeps, only, how to describe, they weren't exactly beeps but feelings.
By "feelings" I mean physical sensations. Like the bass of a drum, but only in my brain.
After that, which was pretty tame, since I was hooked up to a computer and hearing silence except for quiet beeps, Dana turned the processor on so that I could hear real sounds like speech, and my mom started talking to me. I should be honest, it's not easy for me to understand speech through my processor yet, but I will eventually come to recognize exactly what the sounds are, because it sounded at first like a timpani. Yes, a timpani. A kettle drum. Or a whole bunch of them, and it still kind of does.
The first sound I was truly able to recognize was the clicking of my cell phone keys as I typed a message for my roommate. Then, the sound of feet walking on pavement. Right now, I can hear the keys on my computer as I'm typing. They click. A minute ago, I heard the kitchen alarm go off as I'm baking some cookies.
Hmm, being able to hear. Weird.
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4 comments:
I think that's so exciting that little details of sound, we all probably take for granted, are finally being revealed to you. I've always liked the sound your computer keys make, especially the sound your "mouse" button makes. It's so cute!
P.S. We have some filming to do lady.
Yes, we have a whole lot of filming to do. And I type with amazing speed and dexterity, so I'm glad you like the noise!
Did you have a delay in sound reaching you at first?
And did speech sound really terrible at first?
One of the first sounds I noticed was the keypad on my cellphone too!
(its aphrodite from lj, btw!)
I don't think I ever had delay in sount- I haven't noticed that!
Speech still sounds funny, but not nearly so weird. My roommate sounded like Judy Garland and/or Liza Minelli!
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