Activation Day

All right. It's been a long evening :) You're lucky I'm posting this now, but most of you won't read this tonight anyway :)
So we went, and first did a sound booth test before anything else. Turns out, I can still hear some very high sounds when they are really loud. So, maybe I wasn't imagining some sounds after all. But I can only hear them in my right ear. I heard NOTHING in my left ear. It was a short test...maybe 10 minutes. I guess this is a new thing, as they have started doing what is called a soft insertion of the implant device in my head (basically, they try to be as careful as possible, so that some natural hearing can be preserved).
Then we went to the room with the chair and all the equipment to look at your ears, etc. The nurse came in and checked my scars, and found that there was a stitch left in each incision, so she trimmed them down as they were poking out. I was glad to find this out, as I thought maybe I had a skin tag growing, and it was annoying. Now, I don't feel that "skin" anymore, YAY!
Finally, we meet up with the audiologist who was doing my activation. First we talked about some confusion, and I basically got to determine who would do my activation, and I chose the one who came to see me...as she was going to do it anyway. Then there was a student observing the session today. That had to be an exciting one for him, an adult who was doing a simultaneous bilateral cochlear implant, and on activation day to boot.
She then said she really wanted to push me through this process. I'm SO okay with that :)
We first did my left ear. She checked the magnet strength. The level 2 magnet was not strong enough, so she put it to a level 3 magnet. That seemed to work.
She put the magnet on, and I was very surprised to find that I could barely even feel the magnet there. That was a good thing, I expected it to be a constant annoying feeling. So that was another plus. Then she did a check to make sure all the electrodes were working, and they were working just fine. Then she did a check to so see if the auditory nerve was "catching" the specific electrodes that were being turned on. It all looked good, so we proceeded. Next, she had me count the number of beeps that happened to establish the threshold level. Basically, we wanted to see how quiet the beeps could be with me still counting the correct number of beeps. Got that established. Then we wanted to establish the comfort level, or basically the loudness level that I was comfortable hearing at. She did a series of beeps until I thought it was comfortable. Then she turned on the implant. It was a bit too loud, so she turned it off, and adjusted it, then turned it on again. It was better, but was I surprised to even tell that a person was talking.
At first I could NOT make out what the heck the squeaking noise was. After a few moments, I realized it was the audiologist talking. Honestly, it sounded exactly like the wii fit board that "talks" to you on wii fit. If you haven't heard that, then the best comparison I can make is a mouse squeaking. It was really weird. Then she had me do a listening test where I had to name a day of the week that she had said. I got them all right, which REALLY surprised me, she said all of them except for Friday. She said that was great, and then programmed the back up processor for my left ear.
We then went to the right ear. Same process. Magnet on, checked the electrodes, did the clicking sounds, did the threshold level and comfort level. This time I really was off on the comfort level with the beeps for my right ear. She turned it on, and boy howdy, was that loud. She quickly turned it off, and I loved that she turned to tell the student that this was precisely why she kept the mouse over the "off" button, for reactions like mine when something was too loud. We then turned it on again, and it was all good, except I kept hearing clicking in the background. Kind of like hearing an AC going in the background, but you can still pick up speech over the AC hum, except this was clicking. She tried some adjustments and made it so that it wasn't so prominent, but it was still there. She didn't want to turn it down any less if she didn't have to as she wanted to keep the auditory stimulation there, which was fine with me. It was definitely a sound I could deal with without going crazy.
We then the did the days of the week test again. I got them all right except for the last one. I just could NOT figure out what she was saying. I went through them in my head, and none of them sounded right. I went through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday in my head...and it didn't sound like any of them. I just could not figure it out, so I guessed. Turns out it was Friday...which I didn't even THINK about. So I felt better once I realized she hadn't said it before, and that it was just one I couldn't remember in my head. She then said it was good, and programmed the right ear back up processor. As for what things sounded like, it was definitely NOT squeaky. So bizarre. It's closer to what I was hearing before the surgery. Not quite the same though. It's definitely more mechanical, and I can't quite make out what people are saying without reading their lips.
Then we had them both on at the same time. That was a really confusing moment at first. Combining squeaky talk with more normal talk...mechanical and hearing all the background noise as well. Talk about a sensory overload.
Anyway, I've kept them both on since then. Another post will be coming about what I've noticed throughout the day, and what I think has improved and what has not.
I'll also be doing a picture post of all the materials I got (think two thick briefcase size boxes full of a lot of stuff).