Cochlear Implant: Activation Day!!

(Written August 2, three days ago): 

I’m turned on. I admit it.

Most middle age women keep that thing sort of quiet, you know. But, keeping ‘quiet’ has been the problem, so getting turned on will change all THAT!! … Just a little lame cochlear implant humor. I’m sure I will be able to come up with plenty more once I am feeling humorous again.  Right now, the afternoon after my morning activation, humor is not at the top of my list.

It’s a Process they tell me.  I KNOW about processes… they require patience! and fortitude! and hope! and waiting! and humor! and prayer! They also require support from others and I’m more than a little grateful that I’ve been the recipient of love and care from all over. Only one of my friends can REALLY relate to the strangeness that the beginning of the Process threw at me this morning. But, ONE is better than none. It’s a total God – Story that my CI wearing friend Wendy is in my life. She was also the one who finally pushed me over edge to take this plunge. I’m not sure anyone else was truly qualified, though some tried.  Regardless, here I am. Bionic.

Some people have a misunderstanding that getting a CI will restore lost hearing and that magically, one will ‘hear again.’ That’s not exactly true. In fact, the only part that is true is that one will hear something again, but it’s nothing like normal hearing. Some day, as the Process continues, I may actually feel as though I have almost normal hearing.  After all, our nerves and brains are marvelous creatures, even for the middle aged.  And, our mind is happy to trick us sometimes too…  and sometimes it is OK to be tricked. Other times….well, that’s a different story.

Right now, there is no denying that ‘normal hearing’ is NOT part of the deal with a CI. My audiologist (I am learning that the term ‘audi’ is what CI wearers prefer to say, can I adjust to that too?!) took me through the standard routine… raise your hand when you hear a sound or feel something.  I did hear sounds. That’s good--it’s working. Then she went through the same sounds asking for the level at which I perceived them, from ‘barely’ to ‘too loud’.  They were all set at my determined level of ‘medium.’ Soon thereafter was the moment of activation.

Before I say more. I’ve been trying to discern my feelings about heading into that moment as I’ve watched the date grow closer. Fear? Not exactly. Anxiety? Some. Excitement? None. Apprehension?  That’s the best one. I was feeling wary of the coming unknown and having to 100% rely on the stories and best guesses of others.  Everyone’s hearing journey is different, so even with preparation, it’s ours alone. No CI tour guide to lead me on the exact path. I have a direction in which to head and then must find my way alone. Sort of. (Sartre, anyone? Or no one, as the case may be?)

I need a chocolate break. 

So, what did it sound like? The moment of activation, with my audi having set my tones to respond to my determination of ‘soft’ and ‘medium’ was, well… horrifying!  Bombarded by all sorts of unearthly electronic beeps and echoes and swirling noises, I took off my glasses prepared to burst into the tears I felt coming. (Is THIS what I signed up for? THIS is what a CI sounds like?  Get. Me. Out. Of. Here!!) My husband could see that response in me, but the audi wasn’t attuned to it.  I couldn’t even really tell her what I was hearing it was so awful.  (An aside, unlike many CI recipients, I have only gone one short month without hearing anything on that side. My old hearing aid wasn’t great, but I still had sound coming in.  I think that matters in my perception.) Soon, thankfully, I was able to suggest dialing down the high frequencies and tried my best to help describe the sounds entering my brain. No easy task.

I am still trying. I’m an artist, so the things that come to my mind are visual responses to the auditory stimuli. How strange is that?  Strange, I know. But I’m going to go there anyway.  It’s like electronic sounds swirling into mid air. It’s like sounds and frequencies jumping on a trampoline--jumping on a trampoline in a padded room where they sometimes hit the wall or ceiling and bounce back again. Hard. It’s like your neighbor slamming a door or ringing a dinner bell (yea, right!) at the end of a long tunnel. A tunnel that echoes like crazy. It’s like living inside a computer terminal and we all know what that’s like, don’t we?! Those are descriptors for random sounds. I have no idea if they are actually connected to sounds in the environment or not as I have no clue from where the sounds originate. Maybe it’s the sound of my blood flowing!! However, some of those sounds (at appropriate moments) are when I am peeing. I already told you I am turned on. This should not come as a surprise.  I haven’t heard myself pee in years. If I can hear that on day one, level one, I’m a little worried.

Speech? That’s another story. It’s the most important one to me, actually, and the most elusive—a big part of the Process. Miraculously I heard speech today, right away. Not all CI users report that in the first hour. “Speech” is a relative term here. I was prepared for munchkins, Charlie Brown’s grown ups (wah wah wah wah wah), Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck.  What I got was a cross between soprano robots and chipmunks.  My journey, my way, remember… (Maybe I will draw those chipmunks, in fact… as it was suggested I draw the sounds I hear.)  My audi had this cute little page where one points to the words one hears to discern one’s listening comprehension. She hid her mouth (no lip-reading allowed as we hard of hearing folks are GOOD at lip-reading!!) and said some words and I was to point to them on her cute little page if I could tell what she said. I heard words and I pointed to the correct images! But, describing the moment, I was too near tears to declare with glee “dang, I’m good!”  She was visibly surprised at my ability to recognize any words. That bodes well.

The rest of the immediate journey goes like this:

1) Figure out how to attach the processor and ear thingy (likely it has a more official name.) Today it seems more like a poisonous bug, or a young raptor ready to bite me at any moment… I do not want to touch it, remove it, or explore it. It’s plastic, truth be told--$8,000 worth of plastic and computer parts.  But, I need to go slowly. The thing is magnetized to my head, which on the initial attaching hurt more than a little, so my audi downgraded the magnet strength. Gosh, they’ve thought of everything! I’m a two. That made it more comfortable, though that part of my ear and head are still sore from surgery, so I’m bound to not want to mess with the thing much.

2) Upgrade the program on my CI every two days until I see her again next week for more ‘mapping,’ as the programming of a CI is called. With every program upgrade come new echoes, more tunnel sounds, snake-like hissing with every ‘s’ sound and no doubt, more trampoline antics.  I can’t wait. (That would be sarcastic…)

3) Be willing to actually show up for Mapping #2. I may have to ask my chauffeur, who was warmly willing to let me lean on him with my weak knees after today’s session, to make sure I go at the appointed time. Today’s not so fun experience and what these ‘program upgrades’ are supposed to offer me doesn’t make me real eager for next week’s visit.  It’s a Process. It’s a Process.  It’s a Process.

Finally, at the end of the strange electronic tunnel, I have been able to hear not only myself peeing, but the car turn signal, my computer keyboard and running water in the kitchen sink. Stay tuned…

Cochlear Implant Surgery: The Healing Story

(Written a few days after surgery in July):

 I’m tired.  I’m mostly deaf.  It’s hot outside and I am content to lay around in the air conditioning.  (Oh, wait… that’s normal for me…)  I think I underestimated what CI surgery was going to mean as far as recovery.  Honestly, I didn’t look into it all that much and I probably should have.  I figured an hour long surgery plus the annoyance of losing what little hearing (I thought) I had… how hard can that BE? 

Hard.

Plus, I don’t think of myself as ‘needing more recovery time’ because I am merely 54 years old.  I can walk 100 miles during vacation, so how could a little surgery wipe me out?  I usually don’t feel ‘older’, even with my snowy white hair. But, this time, it’s hitting me.  I found a cochlear implant group on Facebook and joined up which I should have done a few months ago, actually.  Turns out that most people need two – four weeks to recover from the initial surgery.  So, I am quite normal in that I am still in the recovery mode, I just didn’t EXPECT that to be the case. 

The short story is that what little hearing I had is gone. Whether or not my one precious “Oh I can hear the trucks in the driveway” frequency returns or not remains to be seen.  It’s like someone stuffed a wad of cotton in your ear and left it there. But, there’s no cotton.  Just no hearing.  That, in turn, has made it harder to hear through my other ear. I underestimated the amount of sound I WAS getting through my right ear which in some fashion stereo balanced what I hear in my left ear.  Needless to say, it takes a ton of energy to try to keep up with any conversation right now.  I bow out of situations where there’s a lot to keep up with.

The side affects that are to be expected included strong ringing in my ear… so strong I thought an ALARM was going off the second night after surgery!  Dizziness which has mostly passed, praise God.  A sore jaw which is a little more pronounced now than it was, a cool black eye (never had one before) and a sore head where the computer thing is jammed up there inside my scalp. It’s kind of like a bump to your head.  Weird. My friend and CI guru told me my body will adjust to that in time and I won’t notice it.  Oh, and the basics of an incision behind my ear that needs to heal. The worst, surprisingly, seven days later after I’d been up and about for a couple of days.  The side affects of the prophylactic antibiotic decided to burst onto the scene.  I was flattened for the whole day in gastrointestinal and headache misery.  The head bumps and sore jaw and ear ringing are most welcome in comparison.  It was music to my ears (har har) when my husband called the doc on Monday morning and he said I did NOT have to finish the last 5 pills!! 

I can’t see my incision as it’s covered up with steri strips and well, I haven’t looked!!!  Ick.  I DID take a regular old shower this morning, not the ‘hold a cup over your ear’ shower that was suggested up to this point. I get activated August 2. That’s when everyone around me will turn into munchkins!!!  Getting sound in some way will be nice, so they say...but hearing my friends and family talk like they live along the yellow brick road, not so much.   That will begin the PROCESS of learning to hear again. 

Everyone keeps telling me “It’s a PROCESS.”  Yep.  Love those concepts of “process” and “patience”.  Character building, of course.  Making me more compassionate… preparing me to be a better listener (functionally and emotionally), helping to enlarge my world once again… all benefits that are no doubt coming around the corner.  That corner which exists somewhere in the colors of October. 

It’s a mix right now, which you’ve no doubt caught.  I have no doubt that the Lord led me to this point and he is near to me as I walk through it, for sure.  There will be numerous God moments and connections that come up through all of this, if I but keep my awareness and heart open. I am and I will.  I’m journaling and trying to listen, happily reminded by my spiritual director that I can hear the Lord quite clearly when he speaks to me, regardless of the status of my physical hearing… a simple reminder to listen with my eyes and heart as well as my ears. 

On that note, I’m off to bed for more rest and healing. I can’t sleep on that ear yet and it might take a while til I can, but I can sleep. For that, and so much more, I will continue to be thankful. 

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? 

The Fair

There is a first time for everything indeed. State fairs. I had never been to one before but since I enjoy the tiny county fairs, I was a willing and even eager participant in the Puyallup Fair yesterday. This is no small statement coming from a self avowed Hater of All Things Amusement Park. The fair is different.

At the fair you can look at intricate quilts and wood carving. At the fair you can be move by photos of different lands. At the fair you can touch baby piglets. At the fair you can even smell and step in manure. Take THAT Cedar Point and Six Flags! If you wish to amuse ME you will have to add the olfactory ambience of farmland manure blowing through roller coaster alley and put a photography exhibit besides the $6 per cup lemonade stand. (Not that the fair is exactly cheap! But I don't know what else there is at the amusement park other than roller coasters and overpriced lemonade!)

Regardless. I had a great time mingling with the cowboy hat clad crowd. It was also 67 degrees and sunny and being the weather wimp that I am, the day's perfection added to my enjoyment. Topping the enjoyment list was the photography exhibit in the fine arts building. I was moved by some soul stirring amateur photographers who travel the world capturing images that bring us all closer together. The smiles from the ladies drinking tea in Mongolia will remain etched in my mind with joy. And the western owl peeking from behinds the tree that won top honors? I would actually buy a print were than an option!

Ever heard of Wool Riders? I had not. My mental jury is still out regarding the wisdom of putting helmet clad three to six year olds on the back of a 'raging' sheep to ride it for six seconds. However, it was an amusing rodeo scene and I took plenty of photos since this was quite the oddity to my back east sensibilities. The winner of the Puyallup Fair Wool Rider Rodeo will head to Fresno to compete for $15,000 in prize money. Get those inner thigh muscles in shape little dinks! Prize money could be yours!

I am eager to share photos of this oddity as well as some of the colorful grange exhibits that tap a rainbow of creativity in the farming community. Skagit County's includes bald eagles and seashells! Ah... I DO like Washington State! My frequent travels here meant I had good reason to jettison my 17" heavy laptop in exchange for an iPad. HOWEVER, in order to adequately use Blogger (one of the reasons I GOT the thing in the first place) I need to figure out an app so that you can be the happy recipient of photos to accompany my blog posts, So far, I'm not there yet. I'll add them ASAP. For the simple minded climbing the learning curve to learn all these 'magical' technological tools to make life easy (HA!), takes extraordinary amounts of time. Thus. Photos at 11.

Treasure Hunt

Remember how fun it was to follow the clues for hidden treasure as a kid? Little clues tucked in and about all sorts of nooks and crannies would lead to something that provided a moment or an hour of joy. Very few grown ups have the chance to follow clues leading to hidden treasures, but there are still some places left where that same feeling of treasure anticipation emerges in one's soul.

Take, for instance, the ubiquitous Garage Sale. Are they not just a grown up version of a treasure hunt? To find and obtain some amazing trinket for far less than the original cost leaves us with a fleeting moment of satisfaction. Perhaps an Antique Store or Flea Market provides the same sensation. Even a foray into the Thrift Store? Or the CSA pick-your-own farm field?

Last weekend I found myself on a surprising little treasure hunt as I joined a local photography club for a morning photo walk. I woke up at the wee hour of 6am (I prefer life of a night owl) in order to catch morning light in some field down in the national park. My eagerness to refine my waning photography skills got me up and out of bed and to the fog laden, dewy field in time to hear a slightly brash instructor, coffee in hand, giving guidelines for the morning.

At this point, I still thought I was going to be learning to tweak the settings on my DSLR, but alas, I was headed on a treasure hunt where hundred of spiders, thousands of flowers and millions of dew drops awaited my arrival. A few words from the photo experts and we set off into the shoulder high, damp field of flowers and thorns to capture some images. I was surprised.

The location is actually fairly unremarkable when you look at it in a 'big picture' kind of way. But, tune your senses into the world of the macro lens and all of a sudden this unremarkable field was chock full of innumerable treasures! I planted my tripod in the middle of spider webs and greenery and started shooting. Yellow! Purple! Green! Fog! Dew drops! Rainbows! There were colors and subjects of all sorts to shoot around me. Time started flying by as I adjusted my zoom lens, put on my macro lens, played with the aperture settings and shot away.

I have to admit, I do love the ability to shoot digitally and to not have to worry about quantity as I go in search of quality shots! (My overly full hard drive attests to my obsession with quantity.) I was delighted to capture a few quality shots, aka a few TREASURES on this photo shoot. It whet my appetite to explore other seemingly unremarkable natural places to photograph what might be right in front of me, ready for discovery.

This Macro Treasure Hunt was a great joy. I am likely to skip Saturday morning garage sales in lieu of waking early to catch the morning light as fall arrives and enlivens the treasures all around me.

Stay tuned.

Transformation

Yes. "Transformation" often refers to the inner work of one's soul as in "I have been transformed." In this case, it has been our kitchen that has been transformed, though I also believe that our souls will follow. Slowly but surely, the heart of the home changes us as well.

We lived with a functional '80s kitchen' for the past 12 years. Upon moving in, I declared that I did NOT care for the room, HATED the Pantry-from-Hell (rightly so since the former owners did a slap together finish with a board right at the spot where you needed to reach in), and that I would gladly feed our family and friends from this room with few complaints.

For 12 years we fed meal after meal from the garden decorated room with the 18" of counter space and antique tavern table island stand in. We hosted Thanksgiving for 16 yearly, birthday parties, catered a gigantic graduation party, learned to cook crepes from our French exchange student and smashed our heads time and again getting things out of the Pantry. We traipsed to the basement for can goods and all manner of cooking pots. We allowed food from the make shift wire shelf pantry to collect grime coming in from the back door, conveniently located by the kitchen and the See-How-Far-You-Can-Toss-the-Recycling-and-Still-Hit-the-Bins bins.

Finally, finances were such that we could make a change. A BIG change too.

Dear Hubbie and I had the conversation: "We can't sell this house with the kitchen like this. We need to redo the kitchen. So are we going to redo the kitchen to sell the house in the near future? Do we hear God calling us to relocate? OR, do we create a kitchen that would be most pleasing and usable to us now and into the future and plan to STAY?" Fortunately, the answer was fairly easy: "We're staying." Our people are here and we happen to like a LOT of things about our area. The funny thing is, since we made this decision, we have been liking things in our area EVEN MORE. Worthy of a totally different blog post as the implications of that sort of commitment are far reaching...

Those photos showed the 'before'. Here are the 'after':



The kitchen is bigger with an addition and my dream for YEARS, of having a fireplace in my kitchen. This is a Rumford Fireplace... tall, narrow and extremely efficient. We won't be cooking in it (though s'mores work just fine!) but given our long winters, we will be using it. A LOT.

And so we bid farewell to the Garden Kitchen of the 80's and welcomed in our 'vacation home' kitchen. Thus far it is totally living up to the task for which it was created. We use out kitchen to COOK, after all. It is merely a tool. A place for gathering, for hospitality, for creativity, for card playing and well, for sustenance--of the delicious and nutritious kind.

Felt

I have had a long term love affair with all things felt. I'm not exactly sure what it is about the earthly connection between my heart, my eyes and my hands when I see, touch and feel felt, but it is strong. It is no doubt about the 'natural.' True wool is utterly natural. It is soft. It is real and it pulls one into creation, rather than alienating one from creation. It sparks my imagination and my longings. For what I cannot quite articulate, but I don't need an answer to dive in and love all things felt.

I finally took a welt felting class this weekend. What fun! It was a class taught by Sharon Costello, here in Ohio from her digs in NY. She knows her stuff and brought all sorts of delicious merino wool, silk and assorted fibers for us to incorporate into our scarves. One day = One scarf. REALLY?

This is the finished baby, without the true colors since it was on the kitchen floor. Outside looked more like the real thing, but I was not patient enough to find a spot in the wet grass for a decent photo!


Nuno felting involves water, soap, time and strength as well as the right fibers. Keep the soap coming!

Here is my scarf laid out before the felting process. Highly tactile, it was a joy to play with the merino roving as I contemplated the design, not quite knowing WHAT in the world I would end up with. So, I experimented.

This kind of arts suits me. Planning ahead for the final product is not my style and stretches me a lot harder than simply taking materials and playing around to see what ends up developing. I am quite pleased with my first project. In fact, I collected some additional roving for another Nuno piece at some point. I love that the materials to actually DO the felting are mostly laying around my house or cheap to pick up. The only exception, of course, is the wool, but a little goes a long way.

Keep eating, oh happy sheep! We love what you naturally produce!