Days Two and Three

So on Friday I went back for more mapping and tweaking. I asked Andrea (my audiologist) for some more juice, I just didn't think it was loud enough for me. Everything sounded like TTY tones or metallic garble. It was strange. So she upped my power a little bit and did some more tests and calibrations on me and then sent me to the sound proof booth for a little audio gram. Well before my implant I was at the 90 decibel range in both ears. This time I was up in the 30-40 decibel range. WOW what an improvement. I was excited. She did some sentences and things with me and I am able to answer her back even though sometimes I need her to repeat them a few times. I cant tell if I am hearing all the words or just picking up bits and pieces and doing the rest myself. Its still better than before. I am really happy with the CI so far. Its a bit heavy on my ear by the end of the day and dang does it make me tired trying to put all this stuff together. On a plus side I was FINALLY able to listen to Jimi Hendrix yesterday enough to get "All Along the Watchtower" out of my head where its been stuck for about 3 months. I could recognize the guitar part which was sweet. I found some online listening exercises that I am downloading to my brand new fourth generation electric blue iPod (thanks mom). I am dying to try the thing out. It came on my activation day. I also drained my first battery last night on the CI after about 13 hours of listening on the second loudest and loudest programs I have. I don't like the first one, its just too soft. So next Friday I am going to see about juicing it up again. That's about all that is happening here. Still cant do the phone yet, but more and more of it comes back each day and hour I wear the thing. I am glad I had it done. Now I want the other ear.... :)

Activation Day

Ok so today was the big day. I was very excited and frankly I was sick of waiting for it. One reason I haven't posted anything is because nothing has really been going on. Its been quiet here. So anyway, I go to the doctors this morning and I am really looking forward to getting the implant turned on. My audiologist told me that she had to run some tests and that I probably wont hear anything while she does it, but when she started, I heard it. It was really weird, it was like way inside my head and it was just a pulsing. So after she runs the diagnostics she turns the implant on and I could hear her typing on the computer!  I wont say it sounded like normal hearing but I could tell what she was doing. I could hear plastic rattle around and all. I was excited. So she started making the sounds like ' ooo ' and  'shhh' and stuff like that and I could nail every one of them and tell her what they were. She read some words off to me and even if I had to get her to say it more than once I was getting it. Now like I said it doesn't sound normal, it has a metallic ring to it and I still feel like I am hearing through some static but damn it I am hearing something! In noise and stuff, still just ok, and I still find myself lip reading a little bit. Oh and when we left Hopkins I heard a helicopter and it scared the hell out of me. I hear little things like my footsteps and water running. Its all pretty cool. I was able to pick out a song on the radio and another on a store sound system. No iPod yet though, the audie told me to wait a few weeks, which is a shame because my brand new Nano came in the mail today! GRRRR I will wait though. That's about it I am heading back tomorrow to get this thing tweaked a little more and all, hopefully have an update again tomorrow. Hope everyone is well!