Second day of sound

Another day of sound!

(June 9, 2005) I was nervous about my second day of sound. The sound the day before had been wonderful, but tiring. That morning I was to attend the first two hours of an all day training session, and then give an hour-long orientation talk to a group of new nurses at the hospital. I then needed to leave and drive to Columbus for another session with Debby. While the training session would be good listening practice, I was nervous about talking for an hour, given my discomfort with the sound of my own voice.

As I walked in to work, everything sounded so loud that I decided to turn down the sound on the implant. I lowered the sound from level 9 to level 7, and walked to the meeting room for the seminar. It's been many years since I've heard more than a word or two at a meeting, so I was not expecting much. To my surprise, I was able to understand about half of what the speakers said, even though they were about 15 feet away from me. At one point, I heard a strange sound and turned around, seeing that someone behind me was unwrapping a plastic bag containing a muffin. Later, there was a shrill tone, and I saw one of our speakers quickly turn off her cell phone. Since cell phones had not been invented yet when I last could hear a telephone ring, that was the first cell phone that I've heard ring. The highlight of the meeting for me was when someone across the room and in the back asked a question, and I heard it clearly.

During a break, I stopped by the pharmacy to visit. My coworkers quickly surrounded me, with smiling faces and many questions. It was very nice to have so much friendly support.

As I entered the room to give the orientation talk, I was pleasantly surprised to see Harry, my boss, sitting in the back. He knew that I was worried about speaking, and told me that he'd be there to help me if I needed it. I started the session by explaining to the 9 or 10 nurses in the audience that I had just had a cochlear implant turned on the day before, and that I was not used to hearing my voice. I asked them to let me know if I was too loud or too quiet, but they told me that the sound level was fine. I made it through the talk with no real problems, although I did lose my train of thought a few times when the echo of my voice caught my attention.

Heading to Columbus, I decided to scan the radio stations in the car to see if I could hear anything. Most of the stations were not clear to me, but suddenly a man's voice came through very clearly, saying "God sends his messengers to the corners of the earth." This station, the only one that I could somewhat understand, was a religious station. A commercial soon came on, and the speaker was urging listeners to call to order a product. To my surprise, I clearly heard the telephone number, as well as several other telephone numbers in subsequent commercials. Each telephone number was repeated two or three times, and I found myself happily repeating the number with the speaker.

(Later that night, Shelly told my daughter Emily "Dad heard the radio today!" Emily, with a shocked look, replied "He can pick up radio stations with that thing?" She thought that we meant that the implant could dial in radio stations.)

At the clinic, Debby escorted me to the examining room, introducing me to Claudia Dome, a second year audiology graduate student who would be working with us. Debby also introduced a medical student who would be observing. We again went through the process of setting threshold and ceiling levels, as well as balancing the electrodes. Debby and Claudia attempted to tweak the program so that my voice did not sound so loud to me, but without much success. Since I was their first patient with the new Freedom implant, Debby called the manufacturer to get the answer to a few technical questions. The sound levels did not change much since the day before, but Debby and Claudia tweaked the four programs for me. All 4 programs were set so that if I activated the telecoil setting (a special setting for telephone or assistive listening device use) 75% of my sound would come from the telecoil and 25% from the room. In addition to the main program, they gave me one with noise reduction, one that focuses more directly in front of me, and one that was especially configured for understanding speech.

Join me in the sound booth, just ahead!

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