6 Months After Switch-On: Slow but Steady

Is it possible for a turtle to run?

These days, I am feeling rather like a turtle that just wants to get to the finish line ... yesterday. But my little turtle legs simply will not run fast enough.

What does the finish line mean for me?  This is my hearing wish list:

• Understanding speech without lip reading.  Easily, without effort - no matter who is speaking, and whether or not I am concentrating.

• Being able to talk on the phone without panicking.

• Understanding and appreciating music.  Being able to make out the lyrics the first time I hear a song, without having to memorize the words and play it again and again.

• Auscultation of lung sounds (listening to breathing with a stethoscope).  

• Improved speech (I am self conscious of my "deaf accent").    

To many, the above come so easily.  When I ask someone how they are able to talk on the phone or overhear a conversation across the room, a common response is : "I just do".  They don't need to think about the process, or even concentrate on it.  It happens without effort ... like seeing or walking would for me.  It comes so naturally, it is difficult not to take it for granted.  Many people do.  I don't hold it against them.

I have heard that the 3 P's: Patience, Persistence and Positivity are necessary with CI rehab.  It is difficult sometimes.  Especially when many people think that because my CI provides for improved access to sound (e.g. "It's so amazing, you can hear that phone ring in the next room!"), I will immediately achieve all of these things.  When people look at me and ask "Did you hear that?", my response is invariably - "yes, BUT..." ... I still didn't understand.

I sometimes I feel defensive and like I am just making excuses when I explain that learning to hear takes time.  Without preexisting auditory memory to help me decipher what I am hearing with my CI, my brain must undergo the painstaking process of learning to understand an often overwhelming barrage of input.

I can hear voices around me and in the next room, but they often are synthesized, sharp, and unintelligible blobs floating just beyond my grasp.  The blobs are very slowly taking shape into more distinct units as time passes.  Like words emerging from a jumble of letters and words floating in an auditory alphabet soup.

A soup that gets thrown in a blender and remixed when I am tired, when someone has an accent or speech impediment, when there is a lot of background noise.  It can be frustrating to make sense of the jumble sometimes!  Sometimes I wish I could just tune out and just eat the darn soup! :)

It has been 6 months since activation...which is hard to be believe!  I scored 95% on sentences in quiet and 75% on sentence with background noise (via a speaker - so no lip reading!).  Definitely a vast improvement from 18% pre-CI!

I am happy with these results.  But performance listening to a clearly articulated sentence in a sound proof booth is vastly different from reality.

Time, practice, and repetition is necessary before my brain will cross the gap between content and meaning.

I will keep creeping along.  One of these days, I hope to cross that finish line!