Bilateral and new CI moments

Over the weekend, I was sitting outside by the campfire with my husband Bill. It was still daylight. We were waiting for a couple of our friends to arrive. Bill had his iPod connected to speakers that were hanging on the house about 20-25 ft away (I hope I'm not exaggerating the distance. Bill's not here so I'll ask him when he gets home.) The music was not loud and we were talking to each other without any problems. I could hear the music but wasn’t really paying attention. All of a sudden a song came in very clearly. I started singing along. Bill did a double take and said ‘You can hear that?’ I nodded and kept singing bits of the song until it ended. Bill said ‘You were even on key!’ And a new Rock Star is born!

The campfire after dark with 4 people around it was a less than exciting hearing experience. Maybe with time it will improve.

After the friends left, I used the direct connect to hook my Harmony up to a book on CD. I had been reading the book all week and when I went to the library, I found it on CD. I decided I’d finish it by listening and reading along. I turned my left ear off. First I was disappointed because the book on CD was an abridged version so I could not follow along word for word. After a few minutes I started getting excited because I could hear the CD version well enough to know where it was skipping sentences and paragraphs in the book version. I stayed up until midnight and finished the book listening and searching for where it was in the book version. Not exactly a relaxing read, but fun to be able to do it less than three weeks after activation!

The next day we were riding in the car. The radio was playing a hunting show. The guy was talking about dogs. He said “I like dogs.” After about 4 times and finally I said, “Ok, the guy likes dogs!” Bill was surprised again that I was hearing it and I just kept repeating what the radio guy was saying. “It can be very challenging but it’s also very rewarding to train your own dogs.” I’m finding that I love showing off how good I am hearing!

Sometimes I am still frustrated and I am clueless about what is being said around me. Hearing encounters of the successful kind like I describe above (my second CI has been activate for less than three weeks) gives me lots of hope that it is going to be awesome in a few more months! I try to remember it is still early in my foray into hearing in stereo and to not get too upset when I don’t hear all that I’d like to.

It is still as if I am hearing two different things. I can just go with the flow and listen to both or I can focus on one ear or the other to hear what is coming out of it. Actually “what is coming into it” might be the correct way to refer to the sound, but at least with the new CI, if feels more like the ear is outputting sound than inputting it. I’m sure that doesn’t make much sense to anyone except maybe another new CI recipient. I’m wondering if the focusing on one ear over the other is how people can determine direction, but it’s not automatic for me. I have to think about which ear to listen to and sometimes I can’t really get the focus on the individual ear. It’s just been too long for me to remember how having two ears felt and then I probably didn’t pay attention to how they worked together anyway.