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: "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?

Bionic Travels: Day Three

I went out walking for the first time with my CI on this evening. I had no hopes of hearing birds or the other marvelous creatures that inhabit Ohio in August. I just went out. What I discovered was a group of aliens building something in a workshop in my head! Imagine that… they have taken up residence without my express permission.  (I must have given it with all those forms I signed before surgery…)

I live in a quiet, fairly auto free neighborhood and therefore my world was still except for the workshop activity. It was very distracting, though I guess I wouldn’t mind so much if they were building me some shelving for my fabric. They weren’t. Aliens don’t deal in fabric…they like hard things with lots of metal and they throw sound around like it’s a toy. I think they especially like Slinkies and anything that emanates a high pitch twirl. Creeps.  

Fortunately I also inhabit an imperfect world, so I had plenty of problems to work out and finally, after 20 minutes or so, my mind was able to adjust the slightest bit and wander off to ponder other important things.  (Very sorry that I wasn’t able to solve your problems … leave them here and I will try IF I get around to it…) 

That being the better part of my evening walk, I will add the positive note that I heard the footfalls of the runner who came up behind me! THAT sound is the reason I took the cochlear implant plunge.  Reasons to date: the runner’s footfall, myself peeing, the computer keyboard, the car turn signal, running water in the kitchen sink.  The list will grow daily so I am told. Onward…

A New Era

“Welcome back, Andi.”  “Thanks, Andi…”  It’s been two years since I have updated this blog. I have no ideal intentions as far as the regularity of my postings, but I’m writing again and feel the need to make some of my musings public. The main catalyst behind NOW? The cochlear implant that was just installed on the right side of my head.  I was a candidate for getting one of these four long years ago, but I needed to wait. I expected the Process to be intense and potentially draining and I needed my energy to be focused on my mom who was battling ALS.  She’s dancing again with her family and friends in heaven, so now was the time for me.  I was ‘free’ (are we ever ‘free’ emotionally to attend to the hard work that needs to be done in our lives??!) to focus on surgery and relearning how to hear.

Apparently I am also ‘free’ to write and draw and take a pottery class and needlefelt and sew and travel and read the New York Times on Sundays.  I’ve also been a Creative Memories consultant for 16 years and our company has recently met its demise… the same time as my needs to focus on hearing have risen. Coincidences are God appointments in my book, and this timing is one such appointment.  I’m showing up. Creative Memories is changing names and foci and so am I. I’m an empty nester too.  I wasn’t four years ago.  Big change.  Big ‘FREE.’

I changed my header, still pretty clueless about how to make this blog look interesting. I updated a few things, but in one’s fifties, one doesn’t change a whole lot from year to year, other than random surgeries and moves and losses and… well… OK some things DO change. Regardless. My interests remain the same, though emphases shift around. Right now, it’s Learning To Hear and quietly do art inbetween conversations with others and the world.

Rather than bore my “Andi Fan Club” with more direct emails about my Bionic Hearing Journey, I’d rather just share a link to my blog so anyone can gleefully!! come on over and read my journey if they feel like it.  I try not to be dry and boring as there is enough of that in the world.  I also avoid technicalities which may present a problem for me as I adjust to the abundant technicalities of this new device I am wearing. But, I can be smart when I want to. Fortunately I can develop my want to one day at a time.  Join me?