Roaring Lamb

Worn out from listening

Auditory workout...ahh I'm exhausted.  A CI friend sent me a new link to practice and I've been listening hard to tell the difference between words that sound alike.  For example: Two words I used to make a joke of were rice and lice. My friends in the Philippines would say the word rice, but their lips would form the rolled "r" sound which looks exactly like an "l" to me.  Finally I transposed the letters in my mind!  If it looked like "lice'" they actually said "rice."  Anyway back to the auditory training, the exercise randomly said out loud rice or lice and I would click on the word on the left which was lice or the word on the right which was rice.  It kept score and let me know if I chose correctly.  This exercise can be found here.  These minimal pairs are words that sound exactly alike except for one sound. I did very well on some of them and others turned out to be a lost cause for now.

One of the ones that gave me fits was lesson six, these and z's or breathe and breeze.  This is because my high frequency volume is set a little low.  This means "s" and "z" sounds are harder to pick out of the word because they are too soft.

My old map does a great job in emphasising those "s" sounds because the settings were pretty level across the board, which made for bad music, but great high frequency sounds.  I only switch to my old map just to compare the sounds and report this back to the audiologist.

Sat in on a seminar today and it happened to be about blogs!  I was able to sit in the middle of the room and follow the speaker without working too hard at speech-reading.  It amazed me that this fellow who does great photoshop artwork, vjing (or video disk jockeying) and amazing flash effects was touting these simple blogs.  The power of the word in the hands of citizen journalists everywhere has the potiential to not only fact-check mainstream media stories but to report on technology or special interests.  This blog won't just be about cochlear implants, but for now that's all I want to write about.

In two weeks I'll be sitting in a writing seminar that I wanted to hear clearly at for once in my life.  Authors Brock and Bodie Thoene have people read bits of their writing, and I've missed out on most of them.  I'm looking forward to the difference my CI will make this time.

But the most rewarding thing I did today?  Listened to a CD of Bob Fitts.  Oh it was hard to tear myself away to even eat dinner.  Like I said before, music isn't perfect, it is just wonderful...

CapTel and CI

What a riot using the phone can be.  Yes I'm using CapTel and it gives me captioning of what the other person is saying.  There have been times I hear the voice and wait for what seems like forever for the text to catch up.  It gets crazy when I do recognize a word or a phrase and answer back before the text arrives, then the next spoken words don't make sense,  so it is back to waiting again. This makes it hard to get a rhythm going. 

CapTel works by using speech recognition technology.  The CapTel operator repeats everything the other party says offline to a computer that does the transcribing.  The speech recognition software is trained for only that particular operator's voice.  I see the transcription on my tiny screen, and even though it is faster than any other relay service for the deaf, the conversation is delayed.  In the middle of a conversation the other party said something, I'm waiting to read it and I can hear them say hello, hello, because I haven't responded yet.  We hear each others voices and this service eliminates nearly all typing, the operator only types to correct words misunderstood by the software.

My own speech recognition will take time.  I never realized that hearing speech would frustrate me because they sound clear and easy enough to comphrehend.  But I cannot put all the speech sounds together fast enough in my brain to truly hear the word at the speed of sound!  I follow along great when there is a transcript, and in most cases I can even find my place after getting lost.

My mistaken impression about people not getting instant speech recognition lies in the fact that I believed sounds were distorted in the beginning and eventually got better.  Well yes, there is some distortion, but not enough to account for not understanding.  When other sounds besides speech are happening, it isn't easy to filter out the offending noise.  But when I'm in quiet surroundings, I've discovered that words sound like they should be instantly comprehended.  In my case it turns out that it isn't necessarily the sounds that have to be improved in order to for me to hear, but that my brain needs to speed up in recognizing the different constanants and vowels.

There's the hurdle of distrusting the spoken word.  The question: "Did I really hear that" or "Was that the right word" always pops up.  These thoughts get in the way of actually accepting the spoken word.  In a way it is like my lip-reading, I see a word but need to connect a string of words to gain any confidence on whether the "reception" is working correctly. When I can string together more words in a sentence, my confidence will grow and that will make a huge difference.

I did recognize my name being called today.  That turned out to the best moments of my new hearing for today, though I also enjoyed listening to internet radio for most of the day at work.  It really is cool to be in the land of hearing.

The changes I noticed from last mapping

Music...aaahh.  It gets better all the time.  When I was first activated two weeks ago, I listened to a instrumental piano CD.  It shrieked, honked, and barely resembled a melody.  The sounds were too compressed, some notes didn't sound different from others.  In the past two days, the melody appeared and it really impressed me.  Not perfect, just wonderful.  At the meeting tonight, a rock band played very loudly, and the vocals stood out better, not in sharp focus, just different from the rest of the instruments.  That wasn't possible before.  There's this one long twang sound that I sort of associated with the strumming of the lead guitar, a very pleasing sound.  It wasn't the bass guitar, and I don't think it was the keyboard.  I heard it on the radio and again tonight, so maybe someone will tell me what made that particular sound later on.

My old map zeroed in on the "sss", ssh, and "t" sounds really well, but lacked any timbre to the voices.  My new map seems to have lost that edge, but overall this is a much improved sound.  Kinda warbles, but it does not sound like static, which overrode a lot of sounds in the very beginning.  At my next mapping, I'll mention this to my audiologist, and pay closer attention to which sounds are loud too loud or soft and too soft.  Here's a picture of the chart used to describe these sounds.

Click on it to enlarge it.

I also have a snapshot of the computer screen from the second mapping.  My levels are higher, especially the low frequencies, which accounts for the men sounding really good.  Perhaps when the higher frequencies are strenthened, then the high sounding voice on the phone will sound normal rather than someone who tries to talk after they've had the wind knocked out of them.  I talked to my friend from Sweet Home and it confused me that her voice sounded so high on the phone.  It made me wish I paid attention to the what a woman's voice on the phone sounded like last week.  Here's the picture.  Low frequencies start on the left and go up from there.

Oh, the twitching around my eye...I just noticed that while watching TV, the twitching stopped.  My volume on program two is all the way down, this setting caused twitching when I talked and when the band played.  Program one allows me to turn the volume even lower, so the twitching stops but the voices get fainter.  I prefer volume! 

This needs to be posted or it is going up at the stroke of midnight!

Third mapping

Got back today from Honolulu where I received my third mapping in two weeks. The discussion on the CI lists at Yahoo about shrill, high-pitched sounds made me remember what I first experienced. For sure a high-pitched whine permeated everything I heard. After I took off my CI the first night, it took more than an hour to subside, so it really triggered a nerve in my head. At two weeks, it is gone. Other annoying sounds have come in, such as a bubbling sound much like the air bubbles coming from an aerator in a fish tank. As long as other voices, music, tv or environmental noises are happening, I don't hear the bubbling staticy sound all that much.

My settings are all HiRes-P now, the audiologist said that most people he worked with prefer that one. (He probably meant those who haven't heard other strategies.) Because of the knowledge gleaned from the CI community, I've asked him to:

A. Let me have the Auria now (instead of three months later)

B. Open up my dynamic range (IDR) so music would sound better.

C. Start off with the T-mic

He loaded the 70 IDR onto my PSP (Platinum processor), and I'm listening to a CD playing fairly nice sounding piano tonight. I'm pretty excited. However my eye still twitches quite often at the louder settings I'm using. Finally turned the volume down and that's helping a lot. He suggested that in time my facial nerve will develop a better tolerance to the spread of the electronic impulses, and the twitching would ease. If it continues unabated, I'll start asking him to isolate which frequency is triggering it. At this point it is just a nuisance I have some control over.

Speech recognition improves slowly. The announcements on the plane mainly came through as undecipherable, however certain phrases stood out. The talk about smoke detectors came through, as did the federal regulations and (and perhaps potential fines). Other words stood out too, so perhaps about a 10% recognition of that particular speech. That's probably a bit high. But it isn't that easy to know how much speech you get.

Time-wise, scanning through the CI postings has gotten tougher for me, so if I don't answer, try emailing me direct or post a comment on www.roaringlamb.blogs.com (I'd appreciate feedback on how hard or easy it is to comment on that blog anyway)

The mapping from last week is in the trash bin as far as I'm concerned. Each successive mapping has given me more volume and depth to sound. So I have three options to pick from, two maps are exactly the same, and my music one is the one I want to build up at my next appointment on Feb 22. This music strategy is a huge leap forward...time to hunt for some violin and see how that sounds.

I'm thrilled and thanking the Lord for  each new  CI moment.

 

Hearing in meetings

In my writers' group a few days ago, I kept up with the speakers reading their material outloud, reading along on my copy of their writing.  Never could do this before and it was great to be able to find my place again if my attention wandered away from their voice.  I love hearing the differences in people's voices.  The two men that spoke up at the meeting had big differences in their voices, one deeper more resonant, the other meduim deep and sharper tones.  Made me wonder if the CI processor will help me recognize people by their voices.  One of the women's voices turned out to be quite pleasant sounding.  Anyway I know what she said today and didn't have to guess at it like with my hearing aid.

It is very family oriented at my workplace and a two-year old boy gets to spend an hour or so as mommy or daddy get caught up with errands.  I told the mom today that it was so nice to hear his voice, though it wasn't yet possible to know if he was laughing, talking too loudly, crying or what.  But just hearing that little boy's voice made my day.  I've sidled up near the playground or to a bunch of kids a few times, and attempted to make out their speech.  With several voices going, it turned out to be too chaotic.  Hopefully there will be just one talking in a quiet place and I'll see what it really sounds like.

Funny thing about people, they quickly forget what is new for me.  My supervisor stepped out of his office and I heard the phone ringing three or four times, stop for about two minutes, then ring again.  This happened numerous times and about 14 minutes later, one lady walked down the hall looking for him.  When she asked me where he was, I told her I didn't know. Then I asked if she'd been the one making all those phone calls.  She said yes. Had to tell her that I "heard" every one of  those calls.

Been hearing music in places that would have totally escaped my notice.  An acquaintance asked me if knew there was music playing while we were going through the lunch line.  Yes.  That seemed to satisfy her unspoken question, which was "how much do you hear now."  Later on, I heard great drumming and I kept looking around to see who had their car radio on loud. It turned out to be two Fijians getting warmed up before their event that evening.

I love this world of sound.  Now if only the rest of my hearing impaired family would just catch the fever...

Battery life and music

These rechargable batteries are lasting about 7 hours on the average.  I've wondered if getting a stronger magnet will improve matters.  Rumor has it that having a wider gap between the headpiece and the implant, it takes more power.  Also heard is that when thresholds drop (the level at which you first heard the beep) it takes less power to run the CI.  Anyway two batteries get me through a entire day, I'm usually ready to have my "quiet time" by the time the second battery quits.

The extended powercells will be more than enough power for me, I'll see whether the extra weight and length is worth it soon.  I don't have one yet.

They sang American the Beautiful at the Superbowl and it didn't come across that well.  Higher pitched, loud music is still out of whack.  However, I've been singing and humming because some notes sound really good to me.  The discussion on the Yahoo CI lists centered around hearing music and vocals.  Several CI wearers are trying out singing, playing instruments or have expressed a desire for vocal training.  I know it would be a beautiful moment to know that singing on-key is possible for me.  When more adjustments take place, I may be able to hear my own voice among other singers and stay with them much better...even on-key.  Now how's that for a profoundly deaf person?!  (I still hate calling myself deaf...mainly because many hearing people would give up trying to talk to me.)

I tried the different programs, they all have their strengths and weaknesses.  I've let go of the original one, as it creates higher-pitched voices and staticy sounds.  However I still wonder if the original program would be a good music program with adjustments.  I'm using HiRes-P and HiRes-S.  After my appointment next Tuesday, I'll talk about which one is preferrable.

Anyone who has come across this blog and wants a support group, try out these:  CIHear or CI-Clarion.  They are found at yahoo groups.  Also check out this cochlear implant website

What do voices sound like

While listening to audio to improve speech comphrension, I discovered that certain vowel sounds are so similar I couldn't quite distinguish between them.  I also noticed that the "r" sound came through as too soft for me to determine the correct word.  I've been listening to www.biblegateway.com's audio and some familiar passages are understandable, so I'm quite pleased with the fact I'm not starting from scratch.

Sparrows.  Those little birds are mighty loud, yet I'm thrilled to hear them.  Those were the birds that sounded louder than the prayers of 300 people gathered in small groups.  I couldn't quite concentrate because the sparrow's chirping hasn't become a background noise for me yet.

I'm still amazed that people with such profound hearing loss can hear any of this.  I might not score well on speech comphrension for a while, but the pleasure of hearing music is awesome.  With hearing aids it was squelched together into a terrible noise that I tuned out, I probably only felt the beat, but never heard the snare drums.  Now those sound really clear to me.

The sound of cars settled down into a normal roar rather than the squeals and static I first heard.  I really heard the jack-hammer all day...finally turned the volume down after hours of this nonsense.  Backup warning beeps always got my attention before, but they had to be in the immediate vincinity.  Now i'm hearing them a half-mile away at the construction site for 200 condos.

I've jumped into this blog without explaining cochlear implants, believing the links to the left would be a better resource.  All of the companies, whether it is Advanced Bionics, Cochlear, or Med-El have explained how these devices work.  But the stunner for me was the video of the surgery.  The link can be found in the January posts.  At least my head isn't hurting anymore except for a tiny bit of tenderness around the scar.

It feels like this CI has been on my head for a very long time, but it has been less than two weeks.  Getting sound has been both stress inducing and stress relieving.  I mentioned having to use music to drown out the voices coming from different offices.  Yesterday, it didn't grate on my nerves so much.  That will happen to other sounds too, and the important sounds will take center stage.

I'm looking forward to when piano and violin come across as pretty sounds again, however great leaps have already occurred. 

Come back here to read about those special moments as they occur.

Smaller steps

When at my office computer, I never could tell if the sound was loud or even on.  Used to depend on the feel to see if it was playing music.  Well, today I could feel and hear music playing and wondered where it was coming from.  So I tried out my sense of louder or softer.  Got up from the chair and walked to the corner office and noticed the music wasn't louder.  Then walked to the other side of the open area to another office and immediately knew it came from this fella's office.  That's when I settled once and for all I would know if someone messed with my computer and turned the sound up. (Before getting my CI  I never had a sense of how loud anything was, so to play it safe the computer volume got set on the lowest point to keep from annoying others in the office)

I sat and listened to five or six kids that were talking and playing.  They are very high pitched so I'd still need to lip-read them, yet it thrilled me to get an idea of how they sound.  One of them spoke to me, I didn't get it, but realized at that instant that music was playing along with the general hubbub of about 60 people.  But once I heard the music, the beat didn't leave my 'ears' until completely leaving the building.

I also understood  more people I previously had a horrible time understanding.  This improved hearing happened in spite of  the background noise several people talking at once.  At the University of the Nations  we have people from all parts of the world.  So, I was listening to someone with an Australian accent and by hearing and lip reading got 99% correct.  She was one of the harder ones for me to understand in the past.

At lunch, a former speech therapist heard my voice and commented that after 10 days it already was much clearer.  I'm not consciously trying to change my speech, perhaps my brain automatically tunes into the correct speech sounds.

Adjustments are still needed.  The siren of the ambulance the other day didn't kick in until it zipped across the intersection in front of me.  It would seem that if it came directly at me it would be easier to hear.  Have to wait and see.

Just spent an hour listening to simple words and clicking on the correct sounds most of the time.  The program is study dog and I'm starting to pick up the general chatter before and during the excercises.  I'll be looking for other excercises that make me select the correct sounding word and let me know how I'm doing.

The purpose of writing these tidbits are two-fold.  To remember what it sounds like now and to encourage people researching getting a cochlear implant  to press on and get one themselves.  I'm excited about it and will never regret my decision.  Hearing aids are worthless to someone with my hearing loss that mainly ranged 90db and worse.  I love the hearing even while wanting to change it to hear even better.  MORE!

 

Raining sound

Never have heard rain the way I'm hearing it this moment.  Splatting, distinctive wind chime effect, and loud!  Our windows are louvers, so there's no glass masking the noise    I first heard the rain during the evening meeting on the campus where I work.  Thought there was something wrong with my CI because it sounded so staticy.  But when I glanced over to the side of the covered basketball court, the static sound made immediate sense.  Here at home it sounds more like rain, not static.

I'm wearing my body-worn processor (PSP for Platinum Series processor) at home because I prefer the stronger magnet and get weary of fighting the Auria headpiece to stay on my head.  Should be getting a stronger magnet at my next appointment on Tuesday for the Auria .  I've already figured out that the quality of my sound is related to how tightly my headpiece sticks to my head.  During the evening meeting, I kept pressing the headpiece against my head to get better clarity of sound.

I can talk with much more ease on the phone while using my CapTel.  This phone is not like the tty I've used for years.  I can speak directly to the other party, and the relay operator uses voice recognition technology to print out a transcript of the other party's comments on a small screen.  The relay operator actually verbally repeats everything the other party said into their computer program which sends the text to my phone.  This is faster than the old-style tty which means I have to type my conversation and the relay operator also has to type. 

Today I talked with the renters in my house, and could hear his laughter, his voice saying yeah, yeah, yeah many times and also heard him say "take care" and I responded to him before it even showed up on the screen.

Also I finally picked up one child's voice from the gaggle of preschool kids eating lunch.  My, it was really high pitched.  I think the pitch will come down some with my future adjustments, but I was impressed with the fact that I heard his voice at all.  I wasn't that close, maybe 20 yards away.

Well the rain isn't letting up.  This is one time it is good there is a limitation to these devices...you can't wear them 24 hours of the day.  Otherwise I would have a terrible time falling asleep, because these CI's make you really greedy for more sound, even to the point of wearing them to bed.  But the skin between the headpiece and the internal magnet needs its rest, so... I'm going to sleep well...

I'm still amazed at this world of sound.

Meeting my CI sister

The coolest thing about today turned out to be meeting another newbie CI wearer. She and I had the same surgeon, hospital but different audiologists. We chatted non-stop for the better part of an hour and would have kept going if time allowed. She’s hearing quite clearly compared to me, and her hearing history is also different. She’s recently lost a lot of hearing, while my hearing loss extends over 35 years.

She’s wearing the Platinum Series processor, or PSP for short. Her audi plans to let her use the Auria three months from her activation.. I decided from the start that the Auria was my preference and so my audi let me have it on the second day of CI hearing. The difference is that the PSP is worn on a belt or in a pocket, while the Auria sits on my ear like a hearing aid. Both devices have a cord running to the implant underneath the skin high above our (left) ears.

Her audi read the King James version to her to test how many words she understood. Guess the different translation threw her off, but she must be doing well to have that kind of test. I voluntarily listened to a kid’s reading development program, complete with cartoon characters I couldn’t lip-read. Some words were understandable. However the vowels exercise showed me that a, e, i, o, u sounded more alike than they normally would. I kept clicking on the wrong sounding words, because my hearing the consonants threw off hearing the vowels contained within.

So what does the beep of the price scanner at Walmart sound like? Not sure, but it seemed like a strong beep that thudded! That one also didn’t turn out as expected. I always imagined a high-pitched lightweight beep. I walked down the music aisles actually looking at CD’s. Figured out how to use those players that treat you to sample tracks after scanning the CD barcode. It will take more time to appreciate music fully, yet I loved listening and getting something out of it.

The downside of today came from the fact that I cannot turn up the volume without my eye twitching. Program two doesn’t do that to me, but the other two programs have me carefully easing the volume up as I hum very loudly. The audi will handle this next Tuesday when I fly back to the Honolulu clinic. The stimulation from the electrodes some how affects a facial nerve, which is why my eye twitches. I pray that the nerve becomes desensitized to the stimulation, as the opposite seems to be happening..

All the same the improvement from the CI outweighs any of the negatives, such as voices jumping into high-pitched modes when the volume goes up. On TV, when Clark Kent screamed “No” it sounded like the squall of a baby.

I'm pleased, joyful, glad, and excited about the benefits of my new hearing.  Other CI wearers tell me it gets better the longer you wear them.  MORE!  Bring it on.