Hearing and Healing

A couple of weeks before my surgery, a colleague stopped me as I entered the room. 

"Can I say something to you at the risk of being inappropriate?" he started.

I braced myself.  You see, this particular colleague is inappropriate on a regular basis, peppering everyday pleasantries with mentions of genitalia and orgasms at every chance he gets.  He is also Santa Claus... literally, his side job is Santa at the mall, and I tell you this because I think it makes for an amusing visual as I continue my story.  Anyway, the fact that he was WARNING me of potential inappropriateness was terrifying.

"You look radiant!" he continued.  "Your aura... it's a BEAUTIFUL, BRIGHT BLUE!"

And that was all.  I exhaled.  It was nothing compared to what Horny Old St. Nick is capable of, and while it's questionable if he could really "see" my aura, I chose to believe him.  Yay for me and my beautiful blue radiance!

Oddly, it was the second time that week someone had commented on my "energy."  I had met a lovely woman- who happened to be a doctor- and she told me she sensed some strong spirituality and power that lived not only in me, but also in my daughter, Claire.  Of course, I LOVED her medical opinion and immediately called  my husband to inform him of my superpowers.  I think he laughed.

Though Jeff wasn't impressed, I found the whole energy-detection thing intriguing.  I've always believed if I put good energy out in the world, eventually, good will come back.  I KNOW this, but it's hard to do, and sometimes, especially a few days before my period, I lack control and my nasty energies unleash themselves all over the place.   I want more healing and good in my life, and I'm not ashamed to admit I need help.  So this past week, I scheduled my very first Reiki appointment.

According to the pamphlet I grabbed, Reiki (pronounced Ray-key) is a name given to a system of natural healing, where a practitioner gently places his/her hands non-intrusively over a person to realign energy centers of the body.  In the pre-session consultation, I told the Reiki Master I wasn't sure if I was opening myself up as much as I could to my new world of hearing.  This might seem odd (why would I want to block my new ability?), but I was noticing, for example,  I could hear the phone one day, but then the next day I couldn't.   I would know it was ringing because I could see the phone blinking and I would pay close attention.  OK, RING, I heard you yesterday... where are you NOW?   And nothing.

I feel like my brain can be overly cautious and tired, and sometimes, when sounds approach, she can be hesitant to welcome them.  As she gets used to them, she might allow one or two sounds to come in initially, and after warming up a bit, maybe she'll host a few more the next day.  But if she's tired, she's probably going to keep to her quiet self.  My hope is that eventually, my brain will open her doors to a big sound party, stop over-thinking, and just relax.

And that's why my bright blue aura and I gave Reiki a shot.   I want to be open to the possibility of my new capabilities.  And I enjoyed Reiki.  It was relaxing, and though I could hardly feel the practitioner touching me, I DID feel warmth, out-of-nowhere shivers, and at the end- SWEAR TO GOD- my implanted ear let out a little POP.  

My cochlear implant journey is a story about HEARING, but it's also about HEALING.  It's a story about sharing my truth, finding my inner power, and aligning myself with who I am meant to be.  And it's a very spiritual journey, only instead of Jesus or Buddha, at least so far,  I'm stuck with a naughty Santa pushing me in the right direction.

One Month In: Good Days, Bad Days, French Lit and Modern Family

Hard to believe it has been an entire month since my surgery. 

Of all the occasions thus far, my first mapping day proved to be my most victorious situation yet.  Noises surrounding me seemed to be normalizing; instead of hearing voices comprised of 95% beep and 5% robot, I transitioned to around 70% voice and 30% robot.  The latter mix has been much more tolerable.

Since my audiologist, Dr. Sharon, told me I was doing so wonderfully, I was fired up to rehabilitate and to truly start hearing.  I had previously purchased an app on my smart phone; though designed for children, I figured it couldn’t hurt for me to try it.  The app is called Hope Words and it is made by Cochlear, the company that also manufactures my implant.  The premise behind the app is that the user can select a letter of the alphabet and the program will go through various vocabulary words and pictures for a particular sound. 

When I was first activated, I would go through the words and they sounded much too similar to identify.

Banana.  WOOT WOOT WOOT.

Apple.  WOOT WOOT.

Bear.  WOOT.

Sometimes, I wouldn’t even get the syllable count right.  My children would select a word and with little sound recognition other than WOOT, I’d try guessing.

“Um, ball?”

They’d laugh and tell me I wasn’t even close. 

“Banana, Mommy, Banana!” Colin would yell through laughter.  Funny for him, I guess, but I was beyond frustrated.

The day of the first mapping I went through a lot of the words again, and I felt like I was doing better.  Apple, for example, started to sound like “Ah-eh,” which is more like apple than “WOOT WOOT” anyway. 

My confidence was really high on mapping day, and after the kids went to bed, I asked Jeff to cover his face with a magazine and to state completely made up, ridiculous sentences, removing context altogether.  This was quite a task for Jeff who isn’t exactly the nonsensical type, but with time and practice, he was talking about elephants wearing clothes and pooping birds driving cars, and really anything that failed to give me context clues or lips.  I wanted to really see if I was improving. 

I was repeating most everything accurately, and Jeff decided to advance my rehabilitation practice to the next level.  I was thinking more along the lines of Dr. Seuss, but leave it to cerebral Jeff to read aloud a selection from French Literature.   As he recited passages from Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, I was soon repeating phrases like “almost the purple hue of tilled fields in autumn,” and my growing self-assurance was turning into giddiness.  IT WAS WORKING.

To really test how well I was doing, however, I removed the implant processor (without the processor I am deaf on the right side), and we tested my abilities again, this time only my left ear (with its natural hearing) listening.  I expected I would do terribly, a true testament to my implant’s new found success and glory, but oddly enough, I was still doing pretty well.  What the heck was going on?  So much for my giddiness.

More than a year ago, as I slooooowly began to accept my hearing impairment, I attended presentations and support groups.  I had avoided such groups in the past because I didn’t think I would find anyone who would relate to me; I could hear some sounds, after all, and I didn’t wear hearing aids or know sign language.  I also figured I’d be the youngest person there, and sure enough, at my first support group, all of the attendants were a good thirty years older than me. 

Still, there was an instance in one of those groups when a husband was talking about his wife’s declining hearing.  He said, “Some days are better than others… she has good hearing days and bad hearing days.”  That statement was particularly validating for me.  For years, I referred to the good day/bad day philosophy, but wondered if it was all in my head.  For example, I especially noticed my good days in professional situations.  These were days I was just ON, and I would wonder if I was defying science and somehow re-growing hair cells in my inner ear.  And then other days, I would experience the opposite end of the spectrum.  I’d be completely lost, holding back tears (or maybe letting them flow freely depending on how hormonal I was on the bad day), and certain that I would be completely deaf by the following morning.  The support group attendees assured me I was not alone; they too, had good hearing days and bad.

I hate to downplay the success of my first mapping (I can already hear my readers telling me to be kind to myself), but looking back, I think Mapping Day was a really, really good hearing day.  I know the mapping  substantially reduced background noise that previously cluttered my soundscapes in the implanted ear, but I also feel that my left ear and all of its natural hearing was just ON that day.  Together, my left and right ears were little champions.  

But bad days soon arrived.  Following my first mapping, I attended an important meeting of approximately fifty people and it began with attendees greeting each other while grabbing coffee and pastries.  I entered the room and it was LOUD.  As people started talking to me, I was struggling to make out words. 

“Hold on,” I told a friend during an attempted conversation as a I fished through my bag for my implant’s remote control. 

Yes, I am now operated by remote control.  Let me pause to explain the controller, because this feature is a pretty fascinating component of my new status as a bionic woman.  With the remote, I can change the implant’s settings.  Right now I have access to four different settings designed for different listening situations- everyday, noisy, focus, or music.  I can also adjust the volume and the sensitivity on a given program.  The greater the sensitivity, the larger the range.  So if my sensitivity is on level twelve, for example, it’s more likely that I will pick up on noises several yards away than if I had it at level six.  In a noisy room, it can be helpful to reduce sensitivity to be able to hear the person speaking right next to me. 

So anyway, I tried to make adjustments to get to a comfortable setting, but no matter what I did, I could not understand.  As the meeting progressed, I comprehended very little of what was being discussed.  Another moment of defeat and another bad day.  My pity party was brief, though; I realized I just needed to keep practicing. 

I’m also constantly reminding myself that I have to work my implanted ear.  I am still  relying on my left ear- the ear that sounds “normal” to me- and my implanted ear isn’t even breaking a sweat.  I’ve tried cramming an ear plug in my left ear, but it’s no use.   My left ear (“the little ear that could,” as my one friend calls it) still tries to compensate for the implanted ear. 

A way to work through this is to connect an audio cable directly to my processor so that my implanted ear is forced to try and make out dialogue without assistance from the other ear.  It’s particularly effective while watching television.  I have one friend who rehabilitated with the help of 30 Rock, and another who chose evening news broadcasts.  Equipped with a new Hulu subscription, I decided that Modern Family would serve as my rehab selection.  Let me just say that I am thrilled with my choice.  First of all, Modern Family is effing hilarious (How funny was Lily on a leash at Disney Land?), and second, I have the diverse voices of adults, kids, men, women, gay, straight and even a thick Latina accent to challenge me.  Though I’m not able to understand much without captions, occasionally I catch myself understanding a word or two without looking.  In any case, the more I listen, I realize that the world is quieter and more difficult to understand without the implant—another minor victory considering I wanted to throw the device in the PCB-laden Hudson River when I first started wearing it.

One month in, and I’m still waiting for my amazing “I can’t believe I heard that” CI moment.  On the flip side, I haven’t experienced a moment of agony either, so I remain optimistic. And hey—I’ve already realized I prefer Modern Family over French Literature.    Slow and steady, I progress, continuing my journey of both good days and bad.

My rehabilitation team