Time flies - A picture journal of what we've been up to

So, obviously I've been busy or else I'd be spending my time updating this...it is my first priority obviously....:)
I'll come to a CI post soon, instead, you're just gonna have to look at my cheesy kid. :)

Dinosaur for Halloween:

From October 2010

Classic Cheese face:

From October 2010

First time actually PLAYING in the snow:

From October 2010

Just an awesome shot :)

From October 2010

Our little turtle at the zoo

From October 2010

Again, the cheese face:

From October 2010

His most favorite thing at the zoo:

From October 2010

Playing in the moving boxes (yeah, we moved, two weeks ago)

From October 2010

Probably the only picture where you actually see his real eye color. Everyone argues over what color they are :)

From October 2010

So in summary: We went to the zoo a bunch, Wheeler Farm (those pics are on our phones) a bunch, Discovery gateway (pics are also on the phones) a bunch, moved, had Halloween, and I've been working. A lot.

I blame work

Work is keeping me busy, you'd think it'd be making me actually work or something :)

I can't do a whole lot of details, because I didn't write down thoughts when new things happened, which means I can't remember them anymore. So here are the basics:

Before my new mapping this past Wednesday:
I had no chance in heck figuring out what people were saying if I couldn't read their lips.
Everyone still sounded like they had colds.
I was starting to identify songs mostly by the beat of the songs (from a limited set of 170 songs on my ipod that I was familiar with).
I definitely could not discriminate mm and oo (food)

Mapping on Wednesday:
I hate having to try and count the soft beeps. It's so freaking hard, and I doubt myself A LOT. It's the part that tires me out more than anything else.
I got two new programs to focus on, and they are pretty similar, but I'm to go back and forth in between them to see which one I like better so we can do some more fine tuning on the 24th, at which point we will also do a sound booth testing to test the functional part of my hearing.
I have a preference for program 2 so far, but I've asked Bryan to pay attention to see if one is better than the other. Thus far, he's only really seen me on program 1, as my remote died and I had to charge it, and I hate messing with the buttons on the implants themselves.
Voices are MUCH better. No one sounds like they have colds anymore. I could discriminate male and female before, however, I can now discriminate a male from a male (I can tell they are two different people).
No one sounds like they have colds anymore. Awesome.
It is SO much easier to listen to kids now, there is no longer a screeching sound going on.
My last therapy session, I had to figuring out what the therapist was saying with the topic of dinner. I missed a couple of words (chimichanga is the one I'm remembering that I missed), however I did catch Lemon Pie Sundae (completely random), so that's good.
I find myself understanding people when I'm not looking at them from time to time, I still need visuals though to help with the majority of the time.
Things are still "loud". The clock bugs me now, it's no longer cool haha. However, the loud sounds are getting easier to "tolerate".
I haven't done much of my own therapy at home, I've been exhausted after work almost everyday, and just want to collapse (it's not the families exhausting me, it's the catching up to e-mails and paperwork that's exhausting me). And when I get home, I just need time to wind down, eat dinner with my family, spend time with my son, get him ready and into bed, and then...well I'm so tired I want to go to bed by that point.
I have been notching sounds are clearer though, that's a huge pro for me.
Oh yeah, today we used the blue tooth connection in our car to call my mom. She wasn't home, so my dad answered. I've always had trouble understanding him. I was able to understand everything he said with the exception of "Texas", so that was a nice thing :) No way I would've understood that two weeks ago when I first got the implants activated. Makes me realize more and more just how important some changes in a map can be.

I'll try to be more consistent, but like I said in the header of my blog, I make no promises :)

More training

So, here are the basic notes of what I'm finding through my training with the CD they gave me.

Pure tone test - Training 1: 100% 3 tones, 2 same, 1 different, choose the different.
Male vs. Female Training 1: 100% 3 samples, 2 same, 1 different, choose the different. (simply male v. female)
Vowel Discrminiation Training 2 step 1: 85% two words, minimal pairs, differ only in the vowel. The following are the common vowels I would confuse: eh v. uh, oo (book) v. er, ah v. uh, rat v. rot
Consonant discrimination Training 2 step 1: 96% Two words, minimal pairs, differ only in one consonant. k v. p was wrong every time I tried it.
Words: Animal: 100%
Everyday sentences: level 1: 100%
Music Appreciation: 82% Instruments: one sound, four choices, Trumpet sounds AWFUL, piano almost sometimes feels like it's cancelled out, and it's an absence of noise and absence is only in the right ear. violin and trumpet confused once, Clarinet does not sound like a clarinet, but a flute sounds like a clarinet to me, cello and piano and french horn confused
Music Appreciation: Melody: 81.3%
Amazing Grace, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Beethoven Fifth, Rock a bye baby
Confused: Amazing grace and beethoven Fifth, didn't do preview, but after hearing them after I got it wrong, I should NOT have gotten it wrong. Happy Birthday and Baa Baa Black Sheep: Happy birthday so does not sound like what I thought it would sound like. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Pop Goes the Weasel, again, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star did not sound like what I was expecting it to sound like.

End of August already?

I cannot believe tomorrow is September. The time has *flown* this past month and a half since my surgery.
I officially started back at work yesterday full time, despite the fact that I was working through my vacation :) And it has been somewhat tiring, but encouraging at the same time. I've had interpreters reserved this week for work, but I'm finding more and more that I do not need them for the most part, and am functioning much like I was before I had the surgery and was wearing hearing aids. So that's good news in terms of more work/paperwork/reservation/people in a home.
I'ms tarting to actually recognize the songs even faster when they come on in the car, as long as they are from the list on my ipod (approximately 160 songs), so I consider that a good sign. I'm also finding that I'ms tarting to tell the difference between vowels and can recognize a couple of them sometimes. I'm also recognizing words, common words, that are used in my home. Still takes some work though.
The biggest thing I've been noticing since I've been at work this week. The adults sound like they have colds still, but children are just an entirely different sound pitch/level. They sound much higher, and louder, than adults.

Outside of that, nothing else has really changed. I'm now on volume 7 on program 2, so within the next two or three days, I'll be on program 3. I am now about to go practice listening using my rehabilitation CD, and hope I don't fall asleep doing it from exhaustion! :)

Massive updates all at once

A forewarning: I updated the entire weekend into separate posts by days. So it looks like a lot, but I just needed to separate them all or else no one would make it through.

Also, please excuse any short ungrammatical sentences. They were just notes after all :)

Sunday sounds and thoughts

Post activation day 5: Program 2, volume 3 and 4.
Just glad to be home :)
Got up and didn't put implants on until after I was done showering and fixing my hair. That was a nice piece of silence this morning.
Gave Kiernan a bath, and it was quite noisy. He loves splashing.
Went to church (Bryan stayed home, he had a migraine) alone with Kiernan. I had a volunteer transliterator (Thanks Becky!) today as she was in town, so that helped. However, having a kid, no husband present and sitting for an hour doesn't make for a very good transliterator watching experience :) However a couple came and sat behind me and kept him entertained for awhile so I could actually make use of the transliterator. All things considering, he was very good.
I have discovered that any kind of crying, fussing or high pitch sound made by a kid is almost as bad as the plastic sound. It sounds like....screeching metal on metal. That's the best thing I can think of.
The singing of the songs? No offense to ANYONE who reads this, but my brain is just NOT ready to process that yet. Wow.
I'm getting better at detecting male and female voices, however it's still not 100% accurate.
I tried out the Sound and WAY Beyond rehabilitation CD provided by cochlear. I did it for an hour, and am UTTERLY exhausted.
Basically, there's a pretest to help you determine what you listen to. I got 30% right on the pure tone test, 33% right on the vowel test, and 40% right on the consonant test. That was really hard.
Just for kicks, I did the environmental sounds preview, training and test. I got 100% on the training. There were two pictures given, and a sound was played. Of the two, I had to pick which one it was. Then I took the test. There were four pictures this time. This time I got 88% right. It's interesting the very SMALL things that make a difference in how I choose something.
For example, water running and fireworks. At first, they sound EXACTLY the same to me. Then after about a second, I'll start picking up the "popping" sounds of the fireworks, but BARELY. I still mostly here that constant "rush" sound. If I hadn't heard that popping, I wouldn't have know which sound was which.
I had to stop after that, but at least I can see how this DVD will be used. I was so scared, because I thought I had lost it. I was hoping to use it on the plane while flying to and form Chicago, but I couldn't find it. Today, I decided to look for it. We looked EVERYWHERE. I even went through all of Kiernan's toys just in case he got a hold of it. 2 or 3 hours later, we found it, in the pile of magazines. Right smack dab in the middle of it. Weird, but at least I found it. I got it for free with my cochlear implant kits. If I hadn't it would've cost me $90 to replace it, and that's at a discounted rate because I'm a Cochlear user.
Anyway, I'm back at work officially tomorrow, and it'll be fun to see the families again. I am using an interpreter this week just to ensure the quality of information, however, I think after this week, I might be able to get away with no interpreters as long as I can see people's faces when they're talking. We'll see. :)

Saturday Noises and thoughts.

Post Activation Day 4: Program 2 Volume 2. Left it that way all day since the remote died, and the charger for it was left at home.

Mostly the same sounds I heard the past couple of days, except the voices don't sound as much like colds anymore.
I was definitely getting the hang of people saying "um" and recognizing it without looking at their faces :)
On the plane, discovered something. On my way TO Chicago, I kept hearing this weird beeps, as if something was interfering with my implant. Thought it was electrical interference. It wasn't! It was actually the magnet part of my implant being slightly pushed off of my internal implants due to me leaning against the wall. I felt pretty dumb after that :)
Got home, and noticed how much easier it was to hear when Kiernan was talking. It's also easier to hear when Bryan is talking, but not always obvious.