Sunday 16th March 2008 - Church

No problem with the implant today. I went to my friends’ church. My friend who is deaf and has a CI works on the sound desk at their church. His hearing wife was singing with the band. During the worship my deaf friend gave me the headphones and tuned me into his wife’s singing, and I was able to pick it up.. her voice singing. It had melody and her voice was quite high pitched. But I couldn’t pick up the rest of the band very well. I couldn’t hear the bass, guitar nor the male vocals. I did pick up the cymbals on the drum and picked up the higher pitch drum beats.

At lunchtime I went to a pub and I switched off my hearing aid and tried to listen to the pub atmosphere with the cochlear implant only. I could hear the murmur of chatter in the pub and the clinking of my cutlery on my plate as I ate.

Tonight I watched Songs of Praise on the TV. I could just about pick out the singing, it was all very very faint and if I listened real hard, I could pick out the melody, but again only some of the higher frequencies of it.

I then brought my electric guitar down, and played some notes and chords on that. I noticed that I could hear the lowest and the highest notes but nothing in the middle.

Later on this evening, I hoovered the house without my hearing aid but just with the cochlear implant. I could not hear the hoover. However when I went outside to sort out the recycling waste to be collected for tomorrow, I could hear the plastic bottles going into the plastic box, I could hear the water going into the flower vase that was used for the carnations that I’ve had for three weeks as I was cleaning the vase out. I could also hear myself walking across the gravel in my back yard as I went to take the rubbish out and I could hear this “crunch crunch crunch” from coming underneath my feet. I was shocked. Then I heard my gate opening and then shutting and the latch shaking on the gate. Mmmm….interesting sounds. Tomorrow will sort out my processor and also look forward to the new sounds that tomorrow’s tuning will bring. It was 2.30am when I went to bed and took the speech processor off.