wanting more volume

While my volume is not maxing out yet, I've found that when it is turned up higher, it makes my eye twitch again.  After my fourth mapping over two weeks ago, I didn't set the volume up as high as I seem to want it now.  The birds are fading into the background, but then the rain around here might just be dampening their spirits.  Now it is cold enough in this house it would be great to have a heater.  Guess what...we don't have heaters in the house and never even use the heater in the car!

I'm using closed captioning on TV, it makes it easier on me. I'm waiting for my audie to suggest some listening learning, or to approve and reimburse me for a software program.  I could turn the captioning off for some listening lessons, but then I switch to lip-reading.  So the best stuff is audio only!

Some CI recipients follow a intense program to relearn to hear.  Since the audie hasn't suggested it to me, I've found it hard to get the motivation to seek out  the audio only stuff that could sharpen my "recall" of the speech I've heard.  I've also noticed that my "s" sounds are not as loud, probably goes along with the need for more volume.

The dial on my CI is very sensitive, a little tweak makes the volume go up pretty fast.  If I accidentally bump it up it gets turned down pretty fast after that.  Way too much! 

So for folks out there wondering how long it takes to get speech recognition, the answer is very mixed.  There are a few stars who do really well, there are those who get it after three months, and some take more time.  I'm getting a mixture of words, but the difference is very obvious, because I understand most people because lip-reading just got a lot easier with the sound to help out. 

It really is cool to hear all the different accents...we have a lot of internationals on campus.  A few days ago one was telling me she took dance class.  I couldn't recognize the word dance because it sounded more like dunce rather than dance!  Oh dear, well she's not in the dunce class!