Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The first 6-7 hours of what I've been hearing

So, at first, everything was just noise with the basic barely distinguishable sound for speech. There was at first no difference between Bryan's voice and the audiologist's voice. They were both squeaky with a hint of "normal." When we went to the front desk to schedule my next appoint, we went out in the hall, and the first thing I noticed was the clomping of the audiologist's shoes on the tile floor.
We then got in the car, and Bryan had the radio on. I could tell it was a person talking right at first. Then music started playing, and it sounded like static. We had to go straight to Heber to pick up Kiernan from my parents who had been watching him for the day (THANK YOU SO MUCH!). Near the end of the car ride, I could start detecting the beat of the music, especially the sounds of the more obvious drums, but still had difficulty with telling when a person was singing.
We then got to my parent's and I started noticing the things that seemed really really loud to me:
Crinkling of foil, dog toenails on the tile/wood/cement, crinkling of paper, "pssshhhh" of a soda being opened, breathing really sharply through your nose. I could also hear the click of the blinker REALLY well, and the clicking of texting on my phone.
I also started being able to differentiate between voices towards the end of us being there. My dad I could differentiate more than anyone else's which was a weird thing for me. Kiernan wasn't too hard, but he's still really difficult for me to hear at all. Bryan's is getting easier to detect, and my mom's was just more female than any one else's.
Then we went home. By the end of the ride I was definitely differentiating the singing from the music, and was starting to hear strong sounds of the guitar.
We got home, and Kiernan was insisting to play outside, so I went outside with him since Bryan was kind enough to get up early with him to let me sleep a bit more.
Wow. Was that noisy. I had no idea where some sounds were coming from, At. All. I thought I kept hearing birds chirping, but then I realized it was Kiernan laughing with another kid. I kept hearing this weird sound that seemed to happen regularly, to find that it was the older kids crashing the wagons into the tables (they were definitely having fun). Talked to a couple of people, and could still definitely detect voices. Just over all though, it was noisy and busy.
I came inside, got Kiernan ready for bed, watched TV a bit while he finished his milk. Noticed that the tv now sounds a lot like I heard it when I wasn't paying attention to it at all and the volume was low (lots of sssshhh and mumbling type sounds). I took Kiernan to bed, read a story to him and sang a song. It was definitely weird to hear me attempting to sing again. I sang every time I put him to bed in between the surgery and now, it was just weird to "hear" it again.
He went to bed, and then I got busy with taking pictures and updating. I can definitely hear the clicking of they keyboard as I type better than I can hear anything else. Basically, if it's a higher pitch sound, I'll hear it better than anything else right now.

So the over all progress:
I can discriminate speech from general noise.
There's no more completely squeaky voices.
With both ears on, things are sounding more normal.
I no longer hear the clicking in the background in my right ear.

Weird things: "hearing" things is definitely a different feeling this time around. When the implants were first turned on, it seemed like I was feeling things more than I was hearing things. This is still true from time to time.
I keep going to push my hearing aid mold in since I'm still hearing higher sounds and my brain is automatically translating that into hearing aid squeals. Imagine my surprise every time I actually feel my finger IN my hear. Weird, I tell you, weird.

There have been no disappointments. I came in not really knowing what to expect, and I'm glad I came in that way then I could not be disappointed or devastated. I had very low expectations if at all, so I'm happy with them so far.

1 comment:

  1. Reading these posts reminds me of some of the rommie memories I have! I hope that you adjust to these soon and hope the squeaks go away!

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