Harmony for C1 Upgrade

This will be a quick post to share my great experience with the Harmony for C1 upgrade. I'm just beginning this journey and so far it is going wonderfully!! My Harmony upgrade was programmed on November 9, 2010, last Tuesday. I know test results only show so much and are not exactly a realistic reflection of how we are actually hearing. However, I was not surprised by these test results so all I can say is my hearing is better than I ever dared to dream back in the dark days of hearing loss prior to getting my first CI.

Drum roll....

Harmony/C1 on Left - 96% on sentences, previous test was 93%
and 66% on words, previous test was 44% (in Feb 2009 I switched from SAS to MPS - that's a previous blog post if you are interested in reading about the big switch - and started seeing improvements after that for the first time in a few years and I believe this latest upgrade to the Harmony has boosted the improvements even more!) I never dreamed I could still see this kind of improvement in my left ear after 12 years of wearing a CI without having another surgery!

Harmony/90K on Right - 100% on sentences, previous test was 99%
and 88% on words, previous test was 76%

I'm on the hearing cloud nine! T-mics in both hears what could be better?

Thank you Advanced Bionics!!

Two CI’s and a Woman on the Road

What a great hearing weekend I had in warm, sunny Michigan! With a couple of Hearing Loss Association meetings on the schedule, I was facing a good six hours in the car. Pre-CI, I found driving longer distances by myself extremely, excruciatingly boring. If you’re hard of hearing or deaf, you’ve been there. Once I received my first CI, my outlook on long drives improved a great deal because I could hear music again. In those early days, I stuck to tried and true CD’s of my old favorites from my hearing days. Since getting my second CI last July (2008), I have branched out to listen (and singing along!) to the music on the radio.

Returning from the Saturday meeting, I was driving along when my phone rang. I had put it on the LOUD ringer so I MIGHT hear it over the radio. No reading glasses on so I couldn’t see who was calling. A second’s hesitation… Will I be able to hear well enough to even know who it is? My mom is in the hospital… Better pick up. So I silenced the radio, grabbed the phone and answered. It was my brother calling to see if I had been to visit my mom yet. We carried on a conversation while I was driving along. (Michigan currently has no laws against this.) I had no trouble hearing him with the cell phone and the T-Mic on my Harmony! Awesome (or maybe not), now I have the same potential hearing people do - crashes due to cell phone distractions. I promise not to make a habit of cell phoning and driving!

Sunday was another meeting in another city, another hour and a half drive in another direction. I had the radio tuned to oldies and was enjoying the music very much. I felt like I was hearing more and more of the lyrics of each song.

All of a sudden I heard:

You are so beautiful to me
you are so beautiful to me
can’t you see
you’re everything I hoped for
you’re everything I need
you are so beautiful to me
Such joy and happiness you bring…

I found myself holding my hand out in front of me and imagining my Harmony in my palm as I sang this song to it. Sounds pretty corny! It WAS pretty early in the morning. I WAS slightly sleep/caffeine deprived. I DID need some entertainment. Mostly I was just feeling VERY appreciative of what I’d been hearing. It really does sum up how I feel about this sweet little device that lets me hear again! Just to reassure you, there was no traffic at all – think Timbuktu on Sunday morning. Everyone sane was sleeping or drinking their coffee with the Sunday news or maybe getting ready for church. This was way before the church traffic would start up.

All weekend, the lyrics just kept jumping out at me. Songs I had forgotten all about, like waves of memories washing over me. Crimson N Clover, Rock On, Goodbye Yellow Brick Rd… Oh, I just love it!

Then a song I had been trying to figure out for the longest time came on. I only heard the music and only noticed the song when I was alone so I couldn’t ask anyone what the song was. I tried once to hum it to my husband, but obviously my humming is somewhat lacking and he couldn’t help. The music would be so familiar to me but my brain was just not making any connections and my 'ears' couldn’t catch any of the lyrics.

Suddenly I heard:

Why can’t you see
what you’re doing to me
when you don’t believe a word I say?

My brain perked up and I started listening harder, turned the volume up a little, then I heard, “ …with Suspicious minds” . My eyes got big. I kept listening. Yes! Realization washed over me. This was the elusive song that had been toying with my 'ears' and brain for months when I heard it played on the radio. It’s mine now. Another one bites the dust…

Then the stop at McDonald’s for a coffee before the meeting. I pulled up to the ordering booth and heard ‘Would you like a double fudge brownie?’ I thought, ‘At this time in the morning? Are you crazy?’ but I very politely said ‘No thank you’ and went on with my order. I felt so empowered. I heard the question plain as day! This morning I did a repeat of this exact conversation while taking my husband in for his eye surgery. He said ‘That was a machine’. I asked 'What?' somewhat puzzled. He said: You just told the recording “No thank you”. We had a good laugh!

Hidden Losses

When the opportunity to join a newly forming Toastmasters chapter presented itself at work, I decided to give it a try. I had considered the organization in the past, but didn’t want to travel as far as the nearest chapter. This was perfect, I didn’t even have to go home, the meeting would be right after work. It’s been interesting and entertaining. I’m a little nervous about participating in some of the roles since most involve hearing and listening carefully. Both are items I need to practice!

Last weeks Toastmasters speech was given by a co-worker who happens to be polish. Her speech was about who we are and how we have/learn traits from our ancestors. She spoke about her grandmother who taught her to speak polish and to bake and about happy sharing times. She urged us all to think about who we are and where we came from.

I’m polish on my dad’s side. My earliest memories of my grandmother are nothing like my co-workers memories of hers. My grandmother was profoundly deaf by the time I was a child old enough to remember her. I remember a nice woman with a heavy polish accent who could not hear me when I tried to talk to her. I’d never thought about it before, but now I’m wondering how much I missed as a child, not because I had a hearing loss, but because my grandmother did! How much more fully would my grandmother have participated in my life if she had normal hearing?

To my knowledge she did not ever wear hearing aids. Could she not afford them? Did they amplify too much noise to be comfortable? I feel myself mourning the hidden loss of never really knowing my grandmother. She lived a long life, passing peacefully in her sleep at age ninety-eight. She must have lived the last thirty years or more of her life in near silence. I don’t have any details about when she started losing her hearing. Was it like mine, starting in her early twenties and slowly slipping away from her? Did she spend twenty years mourning her fading hearing and the lost connections to her family?

A quick search on the internet turned up the Deafness in Disguise web site. In the 1950’s and 1960’s it was all about hiding your hearing loss. Not much there to really make a person want to wear a hearing aid or admit to having a hearing loss. She didn’t strike me as a vain woman, but who knows what the impact of popular opinion would have been on her?

My own life will be much different from my grandmothers thanks to the wonderful cochlear implants that I now have. I will be able to stay connected to family and friends. My grand children (God willing that I have some someday!) will get to know their grandmother. There will be no legacy of hidden losses. We will be able to communicate and share in each others lives.

What I love about being bilateral and a 100% score

The following are some things I love about being bilateral:

• Sounds are louder, richer and fuller with both my implants on. With only one CI on, sound seems one dimensional and sort of flat. I hear better with one implant than the other but sound quality is best with both. Imagine watching a movie and then watching the same movie in 3D.


• When riding in the car, I hear equally well whether I am in the passenger seat or driver's seat. I can hear and understand people sitting in the back seat regardless of which front seat I am in. Prior to being bilateral, I always heard best as a passenger and even then had great difficulty understanding those sitting in the back.


• In large meeting rooms at work, I can hear people from both sides of the room. Prior to being bilateral, I would try to sit in the middle of a group but in large rooms I could still only hear those on my implanted side. If I tried to sit with my implanted side to all of them, then I was too far away to hear well. Now, I can place myself in the middle and I hear from both sides.


• At parties or in larger groups of people, I can hear the person standing next to me regardless of which side the person is standing on. I feel like I am relearning to focus on one ear at a time depending on which side has the sounds I want to hear. It's much easier to follow conversations in noisy situations.
  
• I've been able to attend company and department meetings without needing my FM since receiving my second implant. In church, I hear more of the prayer requests from people sitting around me and across the aisle.

You might wonder if it's difficult having two different strategies on the CI's. It was a bit odd at first, but maybe it would have sounded odd even with the same strategy since my right ear had not heard for close to ten years. During those ten years, I used the Advanced Bionics S-Series, then Platinum PSP /C1 cochlear implan on my left ear and no hearing aid on the right. After receiving the Harmony/90K in August, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my brain adapted to what it was hearing. Hungry for sound, it quickly started merging the two different signals to increase my overall understanding of sounds and speech.

Today I had my 6 month mapping for the Harmony/90K on my right ear and my annual mapping for the PSP/C1 on my left ear. Both ears scores were up. The results of my HINT sentence tests in quiet were awesome! Here they are:

Right Ear(Implanted with 90K/Harmony Aug 2008) Sentences 99%
Left Ear (Implanted with C1/PSP Dec 1998) Sentences 93%

Both together 100%!!!!!

So, does this mean I'm hearing perfectly, normally and everything?? No, of course it doesn't. But it does mean that I'm hearing the best I have in a long, long time!

My next post... Switching from SAS to MPS after ten years of CI listening. Can I do it? And why should I try?

Movies and 2008 Wrap Up Part 2

This will be setting a record of a sorts. Two blog entries so close together!

We saw two movies over the holidays. First was "Australia" on New Years Eve. It was long! Started at 9:15 and let out at 12:04 so we missed the ball dropping. At least we were awake which is more than I can say for other years! The accents were a challenge, but it was still easy enough to follow along with what was happening. I'd love to see this one again with captions. The little boy was adorable!

Last Saturday, we went to see Seven Pounds. I'm not going to spoil the show for anyone. I didn't have any trouble hearing what was said. Only a few spots that were tricky. The movie is a bit puzzling because not much is explained until the very end. A bit disturbing and sad story, but worth seeing. Will Smith is great in his part. We puzzled over the name all the way home and then looked it up on the Internet so we'd know for sure what it meant. See the movie first so you don't know the end, it will be better that way.

I'm still surprised when hearing words (not just sounds) and phrases of words that would not have been heard before going bilateral. Sometimes I don't even realize that the captions are not on. My hubby will point it out and say he misses them even though he has normal hearing. Or I'll hear a phrase and think, "I heard that..." Take note that the captions are off and then "Yes, no captions on so I must have!" By then I've missed the rest of what was being said because I was too busy being amazed at what I was hearing! I am so used to captions on TV that when they are on and are in sync with the actual speech, then it's like I can hear it even when I can't. Radio and podcasts are the best way to know what I'm actually hearing since there isn't any visual input at all.

The media is constantly blasting us with what a horrible year 2008 is. If my bottom line was the only thing that makes me happy, that might be true. Fortunately, there were many blessings in to be grateful for in 2008! My second CI and much improved bilateral hearing is right at the top of my list. Two ears are definitely better than one!! Even if they are not equal in hearing skills (my right ear with the Harmony does better than my left ear with the C1), everything sounds richer and fuller with both of my implants on. I don't go without either one very often. I hope you can find blessings from events in your life and that 2009 brings even more!