Bionic Travels: In the Kitchen

I love to cook and I love to eat. I also love the custom kitchen we created and have enjoyed for two years. We chose wood flooring and wood cabinets and large windows and high ceilings and granite counter tops. It’s really lovely, but a large room filled with hard surfaces is also a massive challenge for the hearing impaired. Hearing aids don’t compensate for all the sound literally bouncing off the walls!

Having friends over for meals (sometimes really large groups of friends!) is something we enjoy. For the past two years, however, I learned to be content to create a warm inviting context for others to come and connect around the table. I simply could not fully participate in conversations. That was really OK with my introvert side, as everyone else was plenty interesting and I did not need to contribute. I really wanted to ask questions of others, however, and resisted it most of the time because it was too trying to hear the responses. I didn’t feel it was fair for me to ask a question and then have to ask the responder to repeat everything two or three times. I learned to keep my curiosity to myself. This has been disappointing because people are interesting and to ask questions of others is one small way of honoring them. We all have stories to tell and the ability to listen to others’ stories is a great gift.

In my kitchen I have missed far too many of the stories that have been told. I’ve missed all the jokes that have been told. I’ve missed the snide comments of my children one to another and to me, spoken just softly enough for my ears to not be able to detect them. But, times they are a changing!

In my kitchen today I heard the timer on the stove. I jumped it was so loud. Even with my hearing aids in, when standing right AT the stove, I could not hear the timer when it went off.  Since I have been blessed with the gift of multi-tasking, I would often get involved in a new task while I had something baking in the oven. If no one else was in the house (two floors above me!) to tell me the timer was going off, I’d discover food well done. This has been the norm. Fortunately I haven’t had to thrown out more than a few cookies, but my new way of hearing means I will be a better cook!

I have also been able to join in conversations around the wooden table, surrounded by large windows, under the high ceiling. Since my implant, we have yet to have more than five around the table and I’m sure when everyone talks at once I will retreat. But, being able to carry on conversations when it’s just three of us is wonderful. The fact that I can now hear people eating--chewing and crunching--not so much… but I’ll take it, yes I will.

Finally, in the kitchen, I have discovered that different dishes have different tonal chimes. Did you know this? I’m guessing it’s one of those sounds your brain has long shoved out of awareness. But, I’m hearing all manner of clinks and chimes when I cook and load the dishwasher. I also hear silverware scraping on plates and bowls. It is indeed, kitchen music to my ears.  

Bionic Travels: Mapping #3

The noisy world is getting noisier.  Those around me are growing happier.  I am feeling freer.  The cochlear implant bill was $97,422.14.  A small price to pay for a freer, happier, nosier world??   Time will tell once the insurance company decides that they actually DID give pre approval for this procedure which they apparently  have ‘forgotten’ at this point.  Don’t get me started on health care….

That aside. This device is starting to work the miracles I was promised. It’s been fast for me because I had hearing up until surgery. Not much, but enough that I knew what voices sounded like even though I could no longer discern words very well.  Three weeks past activation, I’m understanding more than I have in YEARS!  It’s truly remarkable.  I focus mostly on voices because I could have lived without the newly noticed squeaky windshield wipers and the sounds of emptying water from the clothes washer which sounds as if it is flooding the house… Those would NOT have been worth $97,422.14. Relationships are.

Dave offered a profound insight the other day. For a long time he has been consciously and subconsciously making a choice every time he wanted to say something to me:  “Should I bother with this comment or thought? Is it worth repeating until she gets it?”  As an extrovert, he determined that is a good question to ask oneself all the time, regardless; but when it becomes necessary to calculate every word with one’s wife, that’s just a drag.  His impatience was leaking out though he really tried to seal the gaps. I did the best I could, but it was still hard. 

Many moons ago (four years ago when I first became a CI candidate) my audi said many a relationship has been rescued from the brink of despair by the hearing impaired person getting a CI.  I hear that.  (Pun intended and edited IN.) We were not near any brink, but it was a drag--on Dave, on the kids, on my friends, on my extended family, on anyone who had the audacity to try to telephone me, on the clerk at the ice cream store… Hard.  BUT NOT NOW.  At some point every day, someone close to me says the following (insert gleeful expressions) “You can hear me!!!” “I’m talking in a normal voice.”  “You heard that and I wasn’t looking at you!”

The clerks, mumbling into their cash registers, still get a blank stare from me, but I am actually feeling more confident to go out shopping without an interpreter. I’m a confident and active person so this was weird, but true.  I was tired of telling people with my clear, well articulated speech “I am functionally deaf, could you please speak more slowly. No, you don’t need to speak more loudly, but I have to figure out what you are saying blah, blah, blah…” I am feeling more free… like I could walk into a store all by fifty-something self and make a purchase without confusion!

And then there are restaurants.  I’ve avoided them since surgery July 8, but delivering our son to college last week I needed to eat and therefore had to venture into those noisy, scary places.  Chipotle?!  They obviously have no clue that hearing impaired people exist!!!  Or, if they do, they haven’t any interest in our cash! Line an entire restaurant in METAL?!  HA!!!  Our lunchtime foray into this bastion of college student feeding does not count on the “I could actually hear the waitress say something!” scale of small miracles.  But, the first night, I actually DID hear the waitress say something!  The next morning the timid waiter wasn’t really awake because I had to ask my Oh So Patient College Sophomore Son to interpret for me.  But, one out of three isn’t bad!

If you’re what I affectionately call a ‘quantoid’, you will be more fascinated with the following stats. These are oft rattled off by the CI wearing set, though I’m still behind the curve. When we get our hearing tested we get scored as far as how many words we can recognize, how loud frequencies are, if we can repeat a sentence and have it make sense… stuff like that.  My Ph.D. clad audiologist has been outstanding during this initial mapping phase. While I prefer warm and fuzzy health care providers and she’s not high on the W/F (Warm/Fuzzy) scale, I can tell SHE’S GOOD. She is listening really well to me and paying attention to a gazillion details. I am truly amazed at how she can tweak this CI to fit my needs in all sorts of cosmic dimensions. This time she put me back in THE BOOTH.  (The booth makes us cry and toss up our heads and hands in frustration as it confirms what we know to be terribly true already: we cannot hear.) Anyway, it’s standard procedure to put us in the booth to become qualified as a CI candidate to quantitatively confirm just how bad our hearing really is. I understood ZERO words with no hearing aids and about 4-14% with them. That’s not real conducive to easy living in the hearing world with only a first graders’ vocabulary of sign language. With the CI, three weeks after activation, I scored 64% of word recognition for words spoken in quiet with no context.  Add context with sentences and I got 100%. Stunning. I’ve been told that with practice (not really into that yet), I can reach around 90%.

I think maybe possibly I’m a believer.  Bring on the words.  

Bionic Travels: The Secret Language of Audiologists

I have gathered several audiologists over the past few years and I have seen glimpses of their secret language. I also believe they have a Worldwide Secret Society of Audiologists.

They send out just enough clues to those of us who are outside their Society to keep us guessing. (I wonder what it sounds like at their national conventions?!) I get follow up letters after I meet with my audiologists. I thought others like me might want a small hint of how they like to communicate:

“Threshold responses to warbled tone stimuli ranged from 15 dB-90dB for the frequencies 250 Hz-4000Hz for the right ear, and 5 dB-45 dB for the left ear.”

“Tympanometry is consistent with normal middle ear function bilaterally.”

Apparently I “present as a fifty something year old female with moderate to profound progressive bilateral sensorineural hearing loss of unknown etiology.” 

“Using routine audiometric technique, a psychophysical map was created with good reliability.” (I always knew I was a physical psycho, but now there is proof in my records!)

Finally, “Appropriate behavior was observed when the Maps were tested.” Whew!! Good thing.

For my college aged blog readers: I would strongly recommend you consider becoming members of the Worldwide Secret Society of Audiologists! With all the Boomers getting older and needing hearing assistance, plus all the Millennials who listen to their iMusic devices too loudly, job security is all but guaranteed. And, you’d get to speak a really cool secret language. Better than Primitive Quendian, Westron, Khuzdul or Morgoth. Pays more too. Just sayin’…  

Bionic Travels: "What's That?"

My frequent inquiry of family and friends has shifted from “What?” to “What’s that?” Communicating with me has required a great deal of patience for many years (much to the chagrin of the teenagers I raised during those years.)  I was more than a little worried about the patience that would be required of people now that I’m wearing this cochlear implant. The comments 15 days after my CI activation are nothing short of miraculous:

“You are hearing me.”

“I don’t have to talk as loud now.”

“I asked you that question from upstairs and you answered me.”

“Wow! You can hear me! I’m so happy!” x3 in the same 30 minute conversation

“I’m talking in a normal voice.”

“Did you realize…..?”

All those comments = no one feeling impatient with my constant new question:  “What’s that?”

I am a pretty quick study in most things (statistics, chemistry and calculus aside), but I didn’t expect to be ‘a quick study’ with this CI. Don’t tell my audi, but I’m not really even practicing. All I have done is watch three pilot TV shows on Netflix: Glee, Ugly Betty and Switched at Birth, the later one being brand new to me. I want to see it again and see how well I can follow the signing. I am seriously behind the times in the TV department, but I don't care.  My assignment was to watch shows with closed captions and wearing only my CI (and pants or a dress, of course.) That I did.  I can understand what’s being said, but I’m well practiced in closed captioning, so it’s tricky to know how my brain is being trained. (Trained by Glee and Ugly Betty? Scary, indeed.) 

The question at hand relates to environmental sounds. It’s a noisy world we live in!  I understand how deaf individuals might not want to enter the hearing world.  I have always heard voices (no comments please) and environmental sounds, just not very well for about 15 years. Some of them faded out completely. The ones that abandoned me are the ones I am starting to ask about.

“What’s that?”

“A blue jay, Andi.”

“What’s that?”

“A blue jay, Andi.”

“What’s that?”

“A blue jay, Andi.”

Not a typo.  Just one day’s requirement of patience from my family.

“Was that a bullfrog?” I asked walking towards Lake Erie from the Sheldon Marsh parking lot the other day. You’ve passed it on the way to Cedar Point, btw. But, most people are drooling over elephant ears and waiting in line for two hours for the latest and greatest roller coaster. Me? Turning off at Sheldon Marsh to wander a long the beach with dead fish and dune plants, but that’s my next blog entry….

So, I say, “Was that a bullfrog?” 

“No, Andi, that’s a jet ski.”

When in doubt, always assume the best of the situation, right?  Bullfrogs trump jet skis in my book any day! The point is, I heard something and I could not see anything!  The list continues to grow. This is good and why my insurance company invested a bazillion dollars in me and my surgeon’s new Ferrari.

“What’s that?” 

A siren (those are the worst and hardest to discern.)

A bird (but it doesn’t sound like a bird.)

The living room clock (really weird chimes.)

The kids across the street (strange squeaks, but it’s something.)

A clock (in the art studio… what IS that incessant ticking sound? A radiator? A table creaking? Something at the window? I looked at the second hand on the clock. Ticking. Oh.)

Leaves rustling in the wind (oh, happy me!!!!) 

The electric tea kettle signal (just barely, but if I pay attention…)

The trash truck down the street (you take the bad with the good.) 

My shoe squeaking when I walk (Julie is the most patient BFF in the universe as she has endured hundreds of miles walking with me while my shoes squeaked, me having never heard it!)

The grass growing after the summer rain (ha! Just kidding… my audi hasn’t turned on my Earth Goddess Setting yet—that’s next week. I am totally going to ask for the Celtic Fairy Setting too)

I’m asking “What” a lot less and Julie suspects that my emotional life may rise from the Ashes of Cluelessness as I am willing to reengage with humans after withdrawing for many, many years.  I don’t want to give up my solitude entirely, but knowing I can be friendly again will be good.  My years of being sort of ‘snooty’ may be coming to an end, but that’s fodder for another blog entry.

Until then, be nice when I ask “What’s that?!” Please don’t tell me it’s a rare peregrine falcon lost in the neighborhood looking for its mother when it’s only a chipping sparrow. OK?

A Writer and An Artist?

Dear Blogger,

Our relationship is moving much too quickly. When I took that recent two year break, though it wasn't because our relationship had gotten too intense, I didn't think I'd be thinking about you this much so quickly. Here's my concern. In the wee hours last night I woke up to pee. (It was the Silent Pee, not the Bionic Pee that I told you about after my CI activation.) I usually fall right back to sleep but last night I laid there thinking about you. I had topics to write about and words flooding my mind. I hate to admit this, but I even began drafting sentences. Where is this coming from? You seem to have special powers over me that are trumping even my bionic ones! Do I need to wear my cochlear implant all night to ward off your enticements? Do we need another break to avoid a dangerous liaison? I don't expect you to answer, of course. You are likely quite happy to suck me in and take my words and add them to your silent empire. I just become one of your minions.  

Truth be told, at some level I enjoy it. People have been visiting us and affirming our relationship. Even my dad, whose opinion will always matter a great deal to me, thinks what I write is worth reading, publishing and gosh, he's even laughing aloud. It seems even middle aged minions enjoy affirmation.

I just don't want to miss sleep because of you. I will put a little notebook on my nightstand and when you invade my thoughts and entice me to lay awake, I will fend you off with words and notes. You will simply have to wait and interact with me on MY terms and MY timing. If we are going to spend time together, I need to be the one leading this relationship, not you. I'm sure you will understand. You've most likely been through this with others.

That new Art Camp for Women badge I put on the side over there? >

I will talk more about that later. For now, I'm going to church and I am not going to be thinking about you.

Sincerely,

(in case you need to be reminded of my new super powers)

Bionic Andi