Today represents the one month mark since I was activated. What a feeling…and so much has happened since then. I’ll never forget the moment I was first turned on. Boy, did it sound so overwhelming, robotic, hollow and Mickey & Minnie Mousey. And it was with my worse and least favorite ear. And all of 50 thousand, congratulations, teasings, ‘can you hear me?’, ‘what are you hearing’? And the new sounds from the clicking of the stove pilot light, to the crunching of ice under my feet, Danny’s Playstation in the next room, the cat’s meow, the recognition of certain voices and what people are saying without looking, the fan in the laptop, the distinctive difference between the HA and the CI, music especially the famous 5/4 time signature of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five.…to name a few. And even more surprising, my last hearing test which shows the CI giving me 35 decibels of sound across all frequencies. Even today, I heard new things…the firing of the cylinders in the engine of my truck, and the rhythmic cycling of the copier machine across the room. Even to this day, I still get a few “how do you like your hearing now?” And for once, I can hear Steph’s lovely voice instead of what sounded like Tweetybird.

Despite all of the trials, tribulations and triumphs to date, I still have a long way to go. First and foremost, the involuntary twitching which is caused by an electrode to close to my facial nerve. At my next mapping session on March 13th, we will deal with that. I also still don’t have sentence recognition without having to resort to lip-reading and this is the all-important step towards using the telephone. There has been some discussion about therapy for that so that is something to elaborate on at the next mapping session. And certain sounds still need working on, particularly low male voices. Today, I found out that “ahhhhh” was barely distinguishable. And I definitely have to improve on the sound systems around the house so I do have my eyes on a home theater system for the family room and maybe an mp3 player to plug into my CI so that I can be like everyone else in the office.

And yes, I do need to get started on getting the other ear done….