Hook up!

August 24, 2000
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For those of you who are future implantees, a warning: "Stay away from squirrels throwing hickory nuts!"

I had my surgery on August 11 with the understanding that the doctor would NOT shave off too much of my hair because I was standing up (and hopefully not falling over) for a friend's wedding on August 19. Well, he did a wonderful job and I rested a lot, not a lot of complications and I left on August 17 to help prepare for the wedding. Well, the morning before the wedding I was awoken to the lovely sensation of "wet rope" - that is, Murphy the Lhasa Apso wanted to play catch. Ok, fine. We played catch and then I decided to take him for a walk. Well, as we were walking...Boink!...something hit me on the side of the head! It was a hickory nut. I didn't think anything of it. I also noticed that there were numerous cages outside. My friend's dad had apparently been trying to trapsome of the annoying squirrels prior to the wedding.

So, the morning goes on, I'm helping decorate the house and prepare for the wedding and then I noticed a wet sensation behind my ear. I was bleeding like a stuck pig! Needless to say, I was a little freaked out, I went through a few paper towels and tried to maintain pressure. Head wounds bleed and bleed and bleed - that stupid nut must have hit me directly on my incision and caused it to split. What are the odds?!?! So, the bleeding continued off and on throughout the day, I made it through the rehearsal, but then the dad had to take me to the Emergency Room, because I started bleeding pretty heavily again.

The doctor at the ER was pretty cautious - he didn't want to mess up any of my doctor's handywork. Thank God! He tried lidocaine + epinephrine in an effort to constrict the blood vessels and stop the bleeding. It worked until we got halfway home - back to the hospital. Next, he used Silver Nitrate and tried cauterizing the wound. This worked a bit longer, but before I went to bed, it started up again. I am very lucky that the other bridesmaids weren't squeamish because they were my nursemaids and cleaned off the blood and helped me apply pressure.
The next day, I was able to make it through the wedding and most of the reception, but it started up again around the throwing of the garter.

The following day, I drove the 2 hours home. When I got out of the car, I almost fell over from dizziness! In retrospect, I think the dizziness may have been caused by any one or more of the combination of (1) being extremely tired from all the activities after I had been resting all week; (2) loss of blood; and/or (3) visual stimulation of driving 75 mph (!) for 2 hours.

The next day I had a check-up. I told my doctor the story about the squirrel and guess what he called me?.....a "nut case"! ha ha ha ha hmmph! Well, he looked at the wound/scab and said that there was a lot of accumulated blood that he wanted to remove to prevent infection. So, he took some needle-nosed pliers (yes, you read that correctly), split open the wound and then sucked out the blood like liposuction . Then, he wrapped my head back up in the pressure gauze like what I had right after surgery and told me I couldn't got to work for 2 days. Yikes!

I asked him about the dizziness and he said I will have "good" days and "bad" days. Today, I'm actually feeling better. I've been through 2 full days of work but I am EXHAUSTED.

Moral of the story: "Stay away from yard rodents yelling, 'Fire in the hole!'"




September 6, 2000 (Hook-up)
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Wow!!!! It still sounds very mechanical/electrical and a la Star Trek/Star Wars/Tron, but I am able to understand some information without lipreading... already! As the night has progressed, my voice and others have sounded more and more natural.

First we set magnet strength on the headpiece (the external part that attaches on the side of my head). I guess I have a pretty thick head because we had to use 4 magnets. Actually, I think it is because my hair is so coarse. My audiologist had to do a little haircut so that the microphone would lay flat against my head. Matt (my husband) finished the job just now by making me a little bald spot. The headpiece was still slipping off my head when I just turned it barely but now it is better and I am down to 3 magnets.

Afterwards we established what are called my T-levels. These are the absolute softest levels that I can hear on each channel and which embodies certain pitches. We then established my M-levels. These are my most comfortable listening levels for each channel. After that, I had to make sure each channel was about the same volume. This was kinda hard to do because each channel was a different octave and sometimes it's hard to compare the loudness of the two. It surprised me that I still was able to perceive octaves. Pretty cool! My first impression of what I heard when setting my T and M-levels was that low pitches sounded like a dying goose, middle pitches sounded like an oboe setting on a synthesizer and the high pitches sounded like 2 glasses clinking against each other. Wild!

After all the levels were set and they all sounded about the same loudess, she turned on my first program (PPS for you techies). I cried!!! It sounded SO mechanical and SO electrical. Everyone has warned me about this, but I really had no idea what to expect. We had to do some tweaking but then I started getting used to it. Everything sounded the same in terms of voices at first and then I think my brain started to kick in and I could tell the difference between people in the room.

My CI has the capability for 3 programs. The 2nd program uses a different processing strategy (SAS) but it sounds pretty awful to me. It is very "bassy" and I can barely make out syllables. It's supposed to provide me with a "fuller" sound - we had to tweak this program also. I will have to keep trying it, but right now, I really don't like it. My 3rd program is the same as my 1st program (PPS), but louder (actually, right now it doesn't work - I already have a note into the audiologist).

Beth (my co-worker) did a little test with my programs. She hid her mouth so I couldn't lipread and said a few one syllable words open set (i.e., I had no idea what word she would say). I actually got some of them!!!! Things even sound better when I use the CI with my regular hearing aid. I think what I cannot get with my HA (hearing aid), I can pick up with my CI - especially softer sounds and some consonant sounds (/sh, s,f, th/). The sound from my HA also sounds more "natural" to me right now compared to my CI. I can't wait until the 2 become fully integrated.

Sound quality varies from moment to moment - sometimes people sound like they're on helium, other times they sound "gurgly", but always mechanical, somewhat like Jabba the Hut or Yoda (a la Star Wars). I especially sound like Yoda and Matt and I were having a good time quoting from the movie. Even my laugh sounds like Yoda. Ugh!

Matt has been very creative this evening in terms of my "auditory rehab". He started off with monosyllable words (open set) but then threw me a curveball and started saying words in German, Spanish, Japanese and Filipino. I got some!!!! This is going to be lots of fun.

I tried using the phone and listening to the Weather Line, but that wasn't so good yet. I'll keep trying.

Well, that's about it for now. I'm pretty tired mentally, emotionally and physically but am looking forward to really making some great gains with this device.

October 2, 2000 (1 month check)
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Well, went back to the clinic today for my 1 month check....only?....already? They tweaked my MAP's a little more and then we did some testing. In the past month, I've been able to re-learn I think a lot of environmental sounds and I'm really starting to get used to different people's voices again as well as music.

I've also found that having my hearing aid (HA)in the other ear has really helped. So, for you professionals out there dealing with the deaf, encourage the use of the other HA! It seems like the consonant sounds that I don't get with my HA (e.g., sh, s, t, th, f), I DO get with my implant (CI). On the other hand,the more "natural" hearing that I'm used to (e.g., pitch, intonation, sound quality), I get with my HA and that counteracts the electrical/mechanical sounds of my CI. Hurrah!

In addition, I've lost a lot of the "echo" quality that I was getting with the CI - I guess my brain is doing its job and adapting. It also seems like Yoda, Darth Vader and Kermit the Frog are leaving me as well. It was cute a for a little while, annoying for a long while, but definitely better now. I have used the phone twice with mixed success. My gauge has been to call the Weather Line. Well, last week I thought that I got most of the information, including the temperature and I was very excited. So, I called my Dad. One thing I did not take into account when Iwas listening to the Weather Line, was how loud MY voice was. So...everytime I talked, I had to turn the volume down on my processor and every time my Dad talked, I had to turn it up. Ugh! A bit frustrating but at my appointment this morning, we played around with my programs and I may try again. I was able to talk with Dad for a little while and understood most of what he said - mostly short comments. Well, I was so excited, I then called my friend, Heather. I got her on the phone and I was a bit disappointed - I think that female voices in general are harder for me to hear and understand, so the conversation was short but I am looking forward to practicing!

Anyway, back to the testing today....after we tweaked my maps, I went to the booth for some testing in soundfield (these are tests where I sit in front of the speaker and use either my CI alone or in conjunction with my HA). The first thing we did was test my ability to hear certain pitches - low, middle and high pitches. With my CI alone, my responses were in the mild hearing loss range - this is a pretty big improvement over what I got with my HAs previously. In the mild loss range, I can hear conversational loudness level speech but may have problems if speech is really soft or if there is a lot of competing background noise (I have noticed this difficulty already!). With my HAs, there were times when I couldn't even HEAR conversational loudness level speech, much less understand it without visual cues.

Then we got the exciting stuff...sentences. A male voice said a bunch of sentences at conversational levels (no visual or speechreading cues) and I had to repeat them verbatim. My scores were 87% with my CI alone and 90% CI+HA!!!!!!!! That's definitely better than the 0% I was getting with my HAs. I was curious to see how I would do with a female voice, so we found another list. I got 77% on that list. All in all, I am EXTREMELY joyful with these results and look forward to continuing to learn. Once again, I thank everyone for their prayers, good thoughts and encouragement.

Tina
Clarion Hi-Focus 08/00