Monday 17th March 2008 - 3rd tuning and toilet sounds!

Wow, have noticed further developments today. Had my 3rd tuning session today. I have been turned up more and the range broadened after I told my CI audiologist about my developments during the last week with the footsteps etc.

We also swopped over my processor to a spare processing part whilst keeping my blue battery compartment and silver coil. My silver processing unit is going to be sent for repair. Ah that’s better. Also with today’s tuning, it was louder. Speech and language therapy went well too. This week have to practice the S sounds and the k sounds an the sk sounds and putting the end of words in my words like ed and t etc. It was actually quite hard work.

I then drove to work. I have noticed my car engine alittle louder. I got to work and carried on with my usual business, but have noticed there are more sounds going in as my head was kinda vibrating and then I developed a headache and I felt quite irritable. I took some painkillers and this very quickly eased, I became less irritable as my brain adapted to the sound levels. At lunchtime I went to my usual deli bar to get my panni and I heard this high pitched whirring, I thought it might have been coming from the coffee machine, I hadn’t noticed it before and I found it alittle daunting as I didn’t know what it was. I saw one of my colleagues walking by so had to ask her what it was. She thinks it might be the whirring of the fridge motor.

I then got back to my office. We tried the phone with one of my colleagues again. This time I could hear it ring and it was clear!! I then switched the implant to the T position and placed the handset close to the microphone on the speech processor and I could pick up my colleague’s voice!!! But I couldn’t make out the words. He then gave me a clue by giving me the sign and it was rabbit. Then he said another word which I noticed was a two syllable word and guessed he might have said Peter and I was right. Then he said some other words and then I realised that they were names of people in our team, but I could only guess what these were by the number of syllables in the words. But I certainly could hear a voice down the phone line. My other colleagues were watching in amazement as it is so strange and totally unexpected to see me on the phone!! This was good that we are one step forward. Last week I could not hear the phone ring and I could not hear anything down the phone.

Later on in the afternoon, I went to the Ladies and much to my disbelief I could hear myself pee – I had never heard that sound before.. I was soooo shocked that I dashed out afterwards and ran to my desk and sent an email (better than blurting it out loud to the whole office) to two of my work mates. My workmates and I just burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe it. I then got on with my work again. Before we went home, we then tried the phone again and another colleague watched in amazement and when I was trying to guess the numbers what this one colleague was saying, he would give me a clue and encourage me on. I only got the number “twenty – one” correct. Despite only getting one correct and all the other numbers wrong my colleagues clapped in amazement. Wow!!

Then when I got home, I thought I’d ring my minicom from my mobile and I could hear my minicom ring no problem. Then I decided to ring my mobile and listen to what I could hear down the phone. I can hear the dialling tone, the engaged tone and can tell when its ringing down the other end and tell when it has been picked up, but when a voice comes on, I find it difficult to tell whether it’s a real person answering or whether its an answering machine.
Then I started to play my music on my hi fi and bingo, there is progress. There is more sound and meaning from my music than last week so that is now improving too. I can hear the lower frequencies of my music through my implant and they sounds pretty much the same as through my hearing aid, but then I got a whole lot more detail and I now have the high frequency melodies that I never knew existed in my music. At this stage I am aware of its presence but I couldn’t tell you what instrument they are. There are some elements that are still jumbled up which is probably the part of the processor that is yet to be tuned. Yippee, I am getting there slowly. We shall see what other new sounds happen this week and what improvements we will see when I am turned up more next Wednesday 26th.