To hear again (Dec 2004)

This post written just after my surgery shows how eager I was to get this cochlear implant.

What's happening? Well on Dec 7th, the transmitter portion of the implant was placed under the skin above my left ear. Electrodes travel from the transmitter down inside of the cochlear, the innermost part of the ear that fires electrical impulses that the brain interprets as sound.
 
The transmitter is about the size of a quarter and it has a magnet in the housing. When I see the specialist on Jan 25, I'll receive the processor.
 
The specialist uses a computer to set up all the frequencies according to its most comfortable loudness during the "mapping" session. After he's done, it will be turned on to receive sounds from the world instead of the computer beeps.
 
The electrical impulses will create sensations that will be foreign to my brain. I will not know until that moment whether I’ll be hearing “wah wah wah” or “Can you hear me now?” For sure there will be a lot of “white noise” which could be a computer fan, the crinkling of paper, the footsteps of someone outside the room and it will be hard to know what I’m “hearing.”
 
Like a student learning a new language, I’ll be undergoing hearing training. Part of that process will be reading along in a book while listening to the exact same story on audiotape. Hearing the word and seeing in print will help my brain learn to associate the new electrical impulses coming from my processor with the spoken word.
 
Some patients experienced extremely weird noises that began to form a pattern they could understand. After a few months, these noises seem just like the ones they heard with their hearing aid only much better because the high frequency sounds are being heard. I’ve never heard those high frequency sounds in nearly my entire life. While I can hear the knock on the door (low frequency with help of a hearing aid), I cannot hear the squeak of an office chair…which I guarantee you after my “turn on”, I won’t be rocking any chairs and annoying people any more with that sound.
 
There’s much more to hearing with a cochlear implant that is not told here. If you really want to know, here’s the link to the manufacturer of my device: www.bionicear.com