My Cochlear Implant Journey

Happy 2012

2011-12-29T13:27:00.003Z

I seriously think that the older you get, time flies faster... don't you think? Happy New year to you all. I do hope that the UK economy improves and that our government does not squeeze our pockets to pay for their mistakes any more.

I remembered the Beanie hat saga from last winter and managed to remember to buy one, I got a pair of ear muffs that does the job beautifully, they're like the ones that you wrap around the back of your head as opposed on top of your head, plus it's adjustable. I'm still able to hear sounds through it even though slightly muffled but better than total whitewash, yay!. The weather so far has been very mixed, not much snow in the south east compared to the north which is quite blanketed by snow or ice.

I managed to get Smartlink+ through the government's 'access to work' scheme which paid for it, I could never pay the prices they ask for such equipment which is close to two thousand pounds. It's a shame that we the deaf have to pay more for the same privilege as hearing people do. But that's the way things are. I use smartlink for small meetings and listening to music. It's so much better listening through FM than plugging into it. I found if I hard plug my implant into a ipod, the jack crackles badly and it is very uncomfortable, but with wireless FM (smartlink), there's no worries about plugging it in. I have the FM reciever attached to my cochlear implant and it recieves FM signal from the smartlink processor which also acts a microphone. It's very good, it has quite a few functions, microphone mode - narrow beam, wide beam and 360 beam - useful for meetings. Bluetooth for connecting to bluetooth enabled phones. I have used bluetooth to listen to the music and the radio on my iphone. It also has a phone symbol buttons to accept incoming calls and hanging up calls, which is brilliant.

I recently invested in buying a nano ipod with touchscreen and hooked up the smartlink to it, it's really good for my daily runs. Just wish that the smartlink processor is smaller so it can be hidden in an armband or on the waist. I have the nike sensor which I put into my trainer, and when running, it'll pull out the appropriate music soundtrack that matches my running pace to the music - it has helped me to forget my lethargy to run and run simply for enjoyment. Mind you I haven't run in all that long time since school so I am taking it easy. I recently completed the womens Adidas 5k run at Hyde Park and run a respectable 42 minutes. Not bad for someone who doesn't attend the gym. which reminds me I must make the gym a regular thing, it has fallen the wayside since my return from India as I suffered a really bad chest/cold which took a month to shake off.

So 2012, I've decided against any new year resolutions as last years' didn't quite make it. So really this year I'm keeping things simple - get healthy, fit, find a bloke and enjoy life. And hopefully with a job change as well. It'd be nice to obtain a photojournalistic job with paid travel, but one can always dream. With my photography I'll be able to go out more and take more photos and hopefully go abroad on another holiday trip in the fall (autumn) sometime. I have already kick-started my photography excursions already on the 1st January 2012 by a trip to Severn Trent Valley Railway Museum up near Birmingham. The weather was a bit downcast with rain, however I was with other deaf budding photographers so was a bit more fun.

Where's the time gone!...

2011-12-16T14:29:00.003Z

National Flag of India

Christmas' been and gone, my memory's still fresh from the recent trip to India. I have to say India is quite a diverse country and must be experienced in person. I had the opportunity of meeting people who I send work from the UK to India for processing. They were lovely and good hosts they told me a bit more about their home in New Delhi. I spent two weeks in India travelling from New Delhi down to Agra, Jaipur, Ranthambore National Park, Udaipur, Aurangbad, Ajanta Caves and finishing up in Mumbai. The whole trip has been really educative and humbling to experience.

The sounds there is different from home, I heard many different tongues being spoken, proper english (victorian), Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi, Urdu and Santhali. Indians are well versed in two languages due to schooling they recieved as child, English and Hindi plus parent language at home. The sounds of general India is diverse as well, the noise and bustle of New and Old Delhi is very distinct, as New Delhi is very much open plan in the influence of Lutyens who built quite a few famous places including the viceroys palace - now presidential palace among other things so the sounds are quieter. Old Delhi is quite noisy with a lot of Indians going about their daily chores and talking quite loudly particularly when they want something and the buildings are very close to one another and often in a poor state.

The only places one could find solitude was at a mosque or a national park such as Qutb Minar and Gandhi's Raj Ghat where followers pay homage to the founder of New India - Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Gandhi). My hotel was on a travelling train, the style of the train was similar to what a marajah would have had in its heyday. I could hear the wheels trundling over the tracks when it was moving and it's not as smooth as the UK railways, one could tell the speed of the train as it trundles along and the increased bumpiness of the journey. Overall the experience of staying on a train is a one off and a positive experience. The food was first class and the staff very hospitable and helpful. We had our personal butler who served one carriage at our beck and call. The butler we had was very nice and personable sort of fellow.

Ranthambore National Park is one trip I'd never forget, I saw the Indian Tiger 4 times, considering the rarity of the tiger that some people just do not see one on a such trip. I took quite a few photos of the tiger at the wrong settings, mind you it came out of the hidden growth and caught us by surprise that my camera was in the manual mode and had no time to change it to what I wanted. I have a digital DSLR Canon 7D camera. I love my camera and it has brought me good photos but I need more practice with it. You can see all my photos on Flickr . The highlight of my trip is Ranthambore National park and the Taj Mahal. The beautiful symmetry of the place is mind blowing, one could just sit there and admire the place all day without quibble. Jaipur and Udaipur was interesting as we visited respective maharajah's palaces and both had different influences. Ajanta and Aurangbad caves are a feat of human endeavour, devout followers of respective religions carved dieties, religious objects out of basalt rock (Lava rock). It took them 3 centuries to complete the work. Ajanta caves is filled with paintings inside whereas Aurangbad caves is carved out in the open - as my photos on flickr shows.

Mumbai is a mixture of both worlds - rich and poor, the buildings sit by side next to shanty towns/slums. And yet the slums produce $3 billion worth of revenue. Plus Mumbai is also known as the financial district and the home of Bollywood.

Out of two weeks, I only recharged my 24 hour cochlear batteries twice and they performed impeccably in the dust and heat of India. I am now wearing bilaterally with hearing aids, since I have got a new hearing aid with a quieter programming as not to overwhelm the Cochlear implant. The sounds of these two different sound inputs is very different and I freely admit I prefer the quality of the CI against the hearing aid, but that's my personal preference. Besides I was happy to hear in stereo once again. I wonder what the new year brings. Happy New Year to you all.

Another year gone.

2011-07-28T08:48:00.001+01:00

Happy Birthday implant ! - it's now two years since I have been implanted. Can't believe that it's been this long, it was only a while ago that I remember going to the hospital for the operation and coming round from it quite groggy from the anaesthetic.

I just went over my blog from the beginning, I remember those moments and noticed that I haven't been to the ear hospital since September 2010 for any mapping changes. Since that mapping change I have been more than happy with it and felt things were progressing forwards apart from the speech front. I am able to understand people talking fairly easily with minimal lipreading, this is dependant on the situation for example I can understand a person talking if the environment is quiet compared to a busy place like a train station at peak times. With the hearing aids in that environment I would be reaching for the painkillers as I would have had to concentrate so hard to make sense of what is being said amidst the noise in the place. And I hate to say this I have been neglecting my auditory re-training with the auditory tapes lately. With the lifestyle I have it leaves little much time for me to pay attention to things when I want to rest and recover from a long day. However I have been getting a lot of little 'wow' moments where I could hear what's being said without lipreading in context, I emphasise context otherwise I would hearing things in gobbledygook. Conversation with family has now become a lot more relaxed affair but I do find that I am prone to speech disclarity when I am tired. My parents have remarked how well I am coping with this new technology and that my speech has improved in the last two years not majorly but enough for them to hear me well without paying attention at times. I would call that progress.

I am finding that I am now starting to hear accents off the TV particularly when I am watching a syndicated programme from the US, one such good example - Bones, with Boothby and Brennan. The various interns who partake in certain episodes bring in their own unique qualities, I heard very clearly the difference in English and American pronounciation with the ever knowleadgeable intern called Mr Vincent Nigel-Murray. I could not quite pinpoint an accent of intern Arastoo Vaziri as he had middle Eastern accent which he soon dropped when he was caught out.

I had the pleasure to meet up other Advanced Bionics users at a weekend in Cambridge where they are already mentors for AB and I am a newly inducted mentor to this small fraternity. Basically the role of AB mentor is there for support and advice, we will not influence you to choose one brand over the other because each one of us have been there at the beginning of the CI journey. All those daunting research and choosing which implant to go for. Currently there are 4 brands in the market now - Advanced Bionics, Cochlear, Medel and Neuralec. Each brand are unique in their own right and the outcomes are similar but unique. I love my CI make no fault of that, I am sure goes the same for a Cochlear, Medel and Neuralec users. It has always been recommended that one does all the research in all these different brands before deciding on which cochlear implant to go for. One has to ask oneself what do they want out of an implant? external processors are changing in this fast moving technological times all the time whereas the internal implant stays the same.

I went to Poland for the weekend as I have always liked to visit European countries when I have the time. Flew in to Krakow and stayed in a hotel near the city centre of krakow (cracow). Did a lot of walking around and taking photographs of Krakow city square, Wawel Castle, the salt mines and of course Auschwitz and Birkenau. I visited the camps on the last day before I flew out the next day. I have to admit it was quite emotional day knowing full well the atrocities happened there. When I was there, we weren't allowed to talk normally but whisper as a sign of respect so it really took on an eerie feeling of the place, I have never forgotten the halls of shoes, hair, personal belongings and suitcases and the everlasting images of the inmates that never made out of there alive. The gas chambers and the crematoria really hits you that it did really happen despite some disaknowledgement in some quarters. And the scale of Birkenau the habitation camps stretched as far as the eye can see, it was one big camp. Having been to Yad Vashem in Israel a good few years ago and coming to visit these two camps really brings it together. One must remember genocide is not the answer to problems but unfortunately it happens. Anyway it was a good holiday nonetheless and I have another trip to look forward to - a long nice holiday to India, the homeland of my ancestors, despite that I do not carry the typical colouring of the natives but my relatives do. It should be quite an experience with all those images colours, noises and smells.

Is spring coming?...

2011-03-08T14:06:00.000Z

March and it's still cold.. brr brr - I feel it acutely on my CI ear as the processor couldn't stay warm. Since coming off public transport the cold hits you like nothing and one grabs their coat closer together, gloves on and pull up the coat collar and walk briskly. I had to fumble in my bag for my beanie hat and plonk it on my head down to my ears and hold it there all the way in a brisk walk. I made a mental note to find a hat that will keep my ears covered all the time without me holding it down. But I always forget it. Now that spring is on it's way hopefully come autumn I'll remember about the beanie saga.

It's been an interesting few weeks with the building works and it's all finished. It does take some getting used to - underfloor heating and bigger spaces - nice... I'll be glad for some space in the study so I can 'slew' my computer things all over the place. It also has given me the opportunity to crank up my photography hobby up a notch now that I have no excuse not to indulge in it without worrying about space. Hopefully I'll get a car so I have wheels to A and B and taking piccies along the way.

As for the CI implant - it has been slow and I must continue with the auditory training. I have been lazy in the last few months due to the building works etc. Hopefully I will get a smartlink+ that has got bluetooth technology so I can use my FM shoe to talk to it without the need for wires. I really hate the direct input wires - they crackle so loudly and it is a little painful sometimes. Also I want the convenience to keep my equipment plugged into the mains. My iphone is terrible for power consumption, it drinks like there's no tomorrow and I use it a lot so that sorta explains it a lot. I do love my iphone for its 'multi-capabilities' - videos, FB, emailing, facetime, SMS to name a few.

The real question at this stage - how is the cochlear implant working at this stage for a prelingual profoundly deaf person? - well the answer is it's great for environmental noises and it does help with the speech recognition but I seriously doubt that I'll be able to understand the phone complictly with strangers, I can do quite well with close family members but not others. I simply find that I do not hold great confidence to deal with telephones as I am not all that accustomed with phones at all apart from texting and whatnot. But I do find the TV is a lot easier nowadays and I don't tend to have the subtitles on when I am not tired but do have them on when I am tired. Every CI user is different in their experience, hearing memory and hearing history.

Roll on the summer when I look forward a trip to Poland and India!

Happy New Year...

2011-01-14T14:43:00.001Z

What a busy few months. Since I had the fine tuning back in September,I have been kept busy work and homelife wise.

I had the lovely experience of an inner infection! I had to lie down for two days otherwise I would be feeling very green/nauseous. I emailed my ENT - RNTNE and they wanted me to drop by the next day which I couldn't due to distance as I live a good 30 miles away from my ENT hospital and the traffic can be horrendous at certain times of the day. I instead went to my local A&E to see the out of hours doctor who prescribed some antibiotics. Which thankfully did the job, the pain went but was left with slight imbalance issues which resolved itself in a few weeks.

I went on a weekend break to Holland/Germany to visit the Christmas Markets, it was an experience as I realised that I could not understand a word in Dutch or German language when I was foraging around the markets. At least most of the sellers could speak good english or relied on rudimentary signs. Bought a few bits n pieces for Christmas. The places I visited were very picturesque despite the dismal weather of cold and drizzly rain. The food at the hotel in Holland was excellent and fresh. I took 4 24hr batteries and did not take the recharger with me as I wanted to go light. The batteries lasted more than 4 days much to my pleasant surprise as I had clearvoice (medium setting) on two of the programs, it's known that the clearvoice if set to medium or high is quite power hungry. I still had the two 12hr batteries as back up but never used them at all during the holiday.

Christmas came and went and said hello to the New Year... and not much to report there except that now there's some building works going on and enjoyed listening to the new sounds of the jackhammer, powerdrilling, hammering and chipping stuff off the wall, power saws and cutters, and the powergrinders grinding the walls/floors.

I knew the jackhammer would be very loud as most of the workmen were wearing ear protective gear (good!), and noticed that my dynamic gain control kicked in - phew!, I did ask them to put a low setting on the DGC as I did not want to cut down on my auditory experience as I have worn hearing aids in some form for the most of my life and none of them had the dynamic gain control built in until the digital ones came out in the 1980's-1990's. When they came out and was offered to me - I was horrified and pleased at the same time saying that the sounds are clearer but could not hear the background as I have become soo accustomed to and felt bereft without it so much that I begged the audiologist to turn the DGC off, instead they put a low DGC setting in and that worked well for me. I love hearing everything around me and am able to tune certain sounds out. It's nearly two years that I have now been a CI user, wow doesn't time fly!

17 months on...

2010-11-10T14:07:00.002Z

Where has the time gone in the last few months. It's such a whirlwind ride in the last few months, my social, private and working life has just become busier and positive so far.

I've rejoined the gym again much to my own insistence that I wanted to regain my body and fitness levels back once more. I've let my fitness slide so much in the last few years as my life then was a little unstable but am glad to say now it's not anymore.

I'm finding out that I spend more time socialising with my hearing peers more and meeting up with other deaf people on afternoon outings to the theatre etc. And indulging in my two hobbies at the moment - photography and genealogy.

Who said genealogy is boring when I've managed to amass a large family tree spanning over 8 generations back to Queen Elizabeth I ! And that most of my ancestors on one side weren't even British to boot! - that has given me quite a challenge and I have risen to it by looking at other alternative research avenues. My family's always interested in hearing about their ancestry and have always given me questions that I can always answer but other times I'd look it up. I now have a bulging box that needs sorting out into a logical file that the wider family can look at. I like family history as I like history in general, it's always interesting to see how the other half lives in the past.

The other hobby - photography, it was laid dormant for many years when I did not have the time to indulge in it as I had a 35MM SLR camera back then and now nearly everything is digital so it was high time that I upgraded my old trusty camera to a DSLR so that I splurged out on brand new Canon DSLR camera and loving it! I try to find every opportunity to acquaint myself with my new camera whenever I can and playing with the images in post production on my computer. Now with the gym occupying most of my time in the evenings in the week, relegating photographic opportunities to the weekends. I am really enjoying using the new camera and learning along the way.

Anyway back to the matter - My CI progress so far. I have to say that the last year and so has been quite trying as the mapping I got wasn't quite right and it was bugging the hell outta me that I made a quite a few trips to the audiologist until a month ago that the audiologist tried something a little different. She increased my IDR (input dynamic range) from 60 to 80 and the end result was nothing short of amazing!, in all these months I was making having to do with 60 which really made it quite difficult for me to function auditory wise as I'm so used in utilising whatever hearing I got left along with the hearing aids giving me as much input as possible which is why I had the difficulty in the first place, which also probably explains the duration of my deafness as I've always been deaf all my life (pre-lingual severe/profound deafness).

Mind you in those first few months I was quite happy with 60 as my brain was still adjusting to hearing things electronically than amplified hearing. Once the brain has got everything in order, it started to feel frustrated in a way as if the brain is saying where's this sound - 'it's not there' and tried to plug in the gaps quite abysmally making me having to double check everything I heard. Even my auditory rehabilitation was a bit of a trial and tribulations but I stuck it out. And now with this new mapping and increased IDR - my brain is really really happy and it's saying I don't need more, So I am happy with this and has started to improve my word recognition upwards albeit a little slowly but surely. I am not all that overtly confident in using the phone with strangers but it's slowly getting there but I won't be in a hurry until I am more confident.

Over Guy Fawkes/Halloween week in October, I was hearing fireworks left, right, centre and backwards from where I live. I know that I heard it last year with the relatively new implant but the information given this year was more expansive due to the new IDR, I was now hearing the details on the whistling of the fireworks as they shoot up in the sky to the popping of the fireworks along with the obligatory big bangs. I'm glad that I have the AGC (Automatic Gain Control) as this nifty piece of software caps off any sounds that may harm my hearing, in other words it cuts off any painfully loud sounds that would make us cringe in pain. I even heard the Catherine wheel (quite a large one) shrieking away in some large field a few metres away from the house in a school field. The school was holding a fireworks display to raise money for charity. The fireworks continued to go off through the evening for a good few hours from the different neighbourhoods till it died off nearly before midnight. This experience has made me very happy. And here's my updated audiogram.

17 months post activation

Neat uh?

Clear voice

2010-08-10T14:04:00.001+01:00

Just had Clear voice added at the 1 yr review, and a month down the line. I had some problems with the clear voice algorithm that I had ask to see the audiologist at a short notice. It was really grating my patience with the emails going back and forth asking my audiologist to ask Advanced Bionics that it took 3 weeks so I decided to ask for an appointment instead. The issue was that when I was on the clear voice mode, it would inconsistently cut out as if it hasn't got enough power to work. I've already found clear voice to be very useful thing to have but with the cutting out it was really getting on my nerves, hence the emails and asking for appt in the end.

The day came and I saw a different audiologist as my usual one was on leave. she asked if she could ring Advanced bionics as clear voice was a quite new algorithm program and wanted to learn a bit more about it and it's role etc... which was fine with me and she and AB ran through a few tests with my CI and it turned out to be the Power Economy Module that was economising the power to gain maximium benefit out of the batteries. On normal mode the batteries were ok but with clear voice, it requires more power to excute the programming as it's more power hungry program by a small margin. So they've switched off the PEM and upped the power to service Clear voice and it WORKS!!. I've never felt so relieved that it was something simple as that, I thought it might have been the processor playing up or the wires were malfunctioning etc... phew!

So back out in the wide world and I truly tested out Clear voice in noisy places such as train stations such as Kings Cross, Euston, Marylebone and Paddington. Clear voice on medium and in high mode, it REALLY works.. it literally reduced the chaotic noise of the station down to a such level that one is able to hear the train announcements coming through loud and clear over the noise. I was just flabbergasted and admired deeply for clear voice. Sheer genius and kudos to the scientists. It's like wearing a noise cancelling headphones!

Since then I have used clear voice in noisy situations where it calls for it, meetings, pubs, and sometimes on some days when I have a headache, it does give me a respite from the noise but not missing out on anything if you get my meaning.

I wonder what AB will bring out next and with the partnership with Phonak, I hope it's the miniaturisation of the processor and battery??

Happy belated birthday to my CI - 1 year on...

2010-06-28T15:09:00.005+01:00

Gosh time flies by, just had my first ever annual CI review - it's all positive so far despite the ups and downs I've had with the CI. I was a little frustrated for two weeks when the mapping weren't quite right but now it's fine and my word recognition is going up again 'phew'.

I met the audiologist in the morning and she ran through some tests to ensure my internal implant and external processor was working ok and it was. She then walked me through the tuning process where I indicate the sound I hear is loud but comfortable for each frequency. Very few adjustments there but it has improved the quality of sound I hear through the implant. I then got CLEAR VOICE added to my program. So on my three settings, I have clear voice on two of the settings, one set as low and one as medium and one program with no clear voice. I can hear the difference with the clear voice, it's amazing. It's like having a noise cancelling headphones that one wears when they listen to music. Pretty much the same principle here, I walked around the area testing it out switching between two programs and the clear voice does work, it literally cuts down the background noise to a degree and voice comes through much easier. At the moment I'm using my original program until the environment demands clear voice and I'll then switch it over.

That's the audiology programming done, now it was time for the speech therapist to assess my speech/listening perception progress so far. Firstly I had the field test which showed a remarkable degree of improvement to my listening, it has moved from the 20/30 db up to the 10/20 db in a year. From what it looks like on the audiogram - that kind of hearing loss with the CI would be mildly deaf as opposed being moderately deaf with hearing aids which only lets me hear at 60-90 db. Without the hearing aids, then my hearing loss is in the 80 to130's.

The next test was CUNY which entailed of lipreading and listening at the same time - got 89% as opposed to 58% pre implant. Again quite an improvement. Then there was another test which I cannot remember was called - I had to listen to a word or a short sentence then I had to match it to one of the three words that would pop up on the screen soon afterwards - got 100%. The last test which I've always found it stresses me out completely - listening only and interpret what was said, I stopped the test half way through cos I felt really drained and my listening wasn't up to par. The speech therapist was very pleased with my progress so far and wanted to video me saying certain phonetics and a short story. This I did and she said that from listening to the tape last time compared to now - a definite improvement there, meaning that my speech has become a lot clearer.

To end it all - a positive result all round, it's a shame that I couldn't get the other ear done as I feel it would be most beneficial in having two ears implanted and as they say two ears is better than one.

Independent research into cochlear implants

2010-06-08T08:35:00.001+01:00

I was given a link to a word press blog about cochlear implants and have found it very informative and useful for those who are just embarking on the cochlear implant journey. I do wish I had something like this when I started out but I did gather quite a lot of the information mentioned which influenced my decision to go with AB. Quite a few people have asked me about cochlear implants and I could not direct them to an impartial source, now I do. I applaud the blogger for this blog - funnyoldlife wordpress - I look so I can hear.

I find myself in a majority of a group of deaf people which was summed up perfectly -
You lipread and don't really sign.
You're deaf but don't sound or look deaf :)
You're definitely not a hearie.
You're somewhere in between. Where do you fit?

We're the largest forgotten majority of deaf people said by the OP on this - Facebook - I look so I can hear. I find I am more comfortable with speaking than signing as I spend the majority of my time with hearing peers and colleagues than with deaf friends. But when I do meet up with deaf friends, the speech tends to go out of the window and the hands comes out. I found out from experience that if I'm with deaf friends the majority of the time, it has a detrimental effect on my speech making it unintelligible. Which probably means that I don't concentrate so hard in keeping my speech intelligible for others. So it shows how much effort I put into my speech to make myself understood by others, so don't patronise us when we make an effort. Sure there are other deaf people who prefer to sign as they know that their speech is not that good for any number of reasons, not just that they're lazy, it could be that they cannot understand speech well due the severity of their deafness or their hearing aids not being up to par. We deaf people are individuals and you cannot put us into specific deaf groups, it's too numerous. when I meet deaf people for the first time, it's hard to know what's their communication preference until I see them use it then I conform to it, it's easier this way but if a deaf person come up to me they may well either talk or sign, it does not bother me as I can switch to signing or speaking as easily it is. I do find that those who prefer to sign find it hard to talk so I sign and vice versa.

1 year on...

2010-06-01T13:20:00.000+01:00

Just realised it's June now. Was implanted on the 21st May a year ago and the switch on happened on the 18th June.

Just went for a remapping as one of the high frequencies was causing dizzy spells which was quite unpleasant, not far from having a full blown vertigo. Now that's remedied, the sounds now sound much more natural than high pitchy all the time. I often wonder if it's the brain cottoning on the high frequencies and used it a lot causing the dizzy spells. I'll never know. When I was experiencing the dizzy spells for two weeks and I noticed an alarming intensity of the dizzy spells getting worse so I asked for an emergency appointment with the audiologist. They booked me in two days in and also made one for me to see the ear doctor just to rule certain things out. Thankfully it was nothing medical but the high frequency causing the problems.

So a year on, how does it feel a year down the line with the CI?

Well I can say it's been a rollercoaster ride, I know I've mentioned this word quite a few times in my blogs, IT is like a rollercoaster ride with lots of ups and downs. So far it's been mostly up. Still haven't mastered listening without lipreading just yet due to the high frequency issues. But it's coming along nicely.

A few weekends ago I went to the theatre again as I really enjoyed the last theatre I went to see - Sister Act. This time I went to see Wicked. Again it was very good and would recommend it.

I noticed that the actress - Rachel Tucker was the semi-finalist from the TV show - I'd do anything for the role of Nancy in Oliver. She played a very good Elphaba in Wicked and had a really good voice on her. Lee Mead was also in it as Fiyero, Lee was also the finalist in the TV show - Any dream will do for the role of Joseph in the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor dreamcoat.

It was a really good day out

2010-04-09T14:48:00.005+01:00

Had a good day out in London on a Saturday afternoon watching a musical in the West End - Sister Act. It was a really good performance and I didn't think I'd be able follow it that easily. Even they provided stage subtitles/text (www.stagetext.org) The text was displayed on either side of the theatre stage and was in real time. I found that I didn't have to rely on the text all the time as I was watching the performance plus I was also in a good place - in the stalls for a really good value which I can't complain. Even though its been nine months since I've been switched on and my appreciation for music in it's spectrum continues to be more rounded daily. I can now hear music from bass to soprano and able to distinguish the different instruments being played in the pit. The actor/s were very good singers indeed. It was really nice to hear Sheila Hancock sing, she's a long time veteran of the theatres and TV shows. And Ian Lavender - you may know him as lance corporal Pike from that Well known TV Series - Dad's Army. He had a quite good voice on him. Patina Miller who plays Deloris was unavailable that afternoon but her understudy was equally as good. Really enjoyed it all. Already planning to visit another musical in the pipeline in the not so near future.

TV nowadays - I have the subtitles on 50/50 of the time dependant on what's on. I'm finding that those info-commercials that are on repeatedly - I have no problems as to what it was saying without lip-reading. Despite being pre lingually deaf, I still have issues understanding people without lip-reading and will continue to do so until I reach the level that I'm happy to listen without lip-reading. I still haven't attempted the phone yet, am not too confident quite yet but I have been using the phone to call the speaking clock service for the blind to get the time. I consider it as a benchmark to see how well I understood the message, so far I can hear the beeps and the words' at .... the time is .....' but I know there's more to it but am not catching it all quite yet. Still learning the 24hr clock format.

I was discussing about the CI with other CI people and it was interesting hearing about their deaf histories and how they've progressed, it confirms the axiom that every person is different. What I found was interesting for those prelingually deaf was what were their auditory training program was like for them, for example did they recieve intensive speech therapy coupled up with auditory training. Such example of a speech therapy would be using an oscilloscope where one speaks into a microphone and speech patterns show up on the screen and the speaker must imitate the sounds spoken by the speech therapist - this was often repetitive and feedback was given until the word was pronounced properly or clearly understood. Auditory training involves listening to the therapist sounding out words spoken behind a piece of paper and one must guess at what the word was. I had both but could have done more auditory training as I found it more invaluable than the speech therapy as it provides the person with skills and tools to decipher the words heard. My speech therapy was discontinued when I started the next stage of school - grammar school and then it was extremely sporadic sessions of auditory training and speech therapy. I suspect that the school deemed that my speech was intelligible/passable. Even now I would've liked to learn another language - French, Italian or Spanish. I can recite the alphabet in perfect Spanish but not in conversationary level. It does give me food for thought and wondering where my listening skills will be in two or three years time with the CI, I'm sure it will be even more than where I am at the moment.

Well... it's sorted out now

2010-03-19T19:13:00.006Z

Had a bit of a long day today which started off badly by me missing my coach in to London by watching the coach sail on by without me getting at the stop in time, the driver didn't hear me when I yelled 'STTTOOOOPPPP!' and then I uttered profanities at the driver but he was long gone *oops*. The only other choice is to walk into town and catch the coach there. It would be a 45 minute walk at 7.30 in the morning. So I did... I walked all the way to town and had a good half an hour wait before the next coach turned up. The coach in question is a commuter service that services my town and London, it doesn't service my local stop after a certain time. Knowing well that I'd be cutting it fine by getting in London for my appt.

Thankfully the trip was uneventful and arrived at my appt with 2 minutes to spare. I saw the audiologist who proceeded to test my implant and helped me fine-tune the frequencies of my implant, she also ran a test where I beep for every sound I hear until I can't hear it. I'm very pleased with the outcome, it has improved since my last test, it's nearly in the normal hearing range of 20-30 whereas my last test it was in the 30-40's. Hopefully in the next few months my brain will continue to adapt and decipher the implant feed and improve my auditory understanding/memory thus improving my hearing thresholds.

I did ask her about the cold sensation and she reckons it's just simple exposure as I have worn hearing moulds for years and suddenly was exposed to the cold for the first time in years thus causing the mild earache but it went away immediately when I'm out of the cold. This kind makes sense if one thinks about it.

And also I've sorted out my phone - I got the Nokia N900. I hear gasps of dismay and some wow - I know the phone has some mixed reviews, particularly with the battery life, lack of apps under Ovi as the phone is Nokia. I really wanted a phone with multiple capability and I got one and the beauty of this phone is the fast internet connection and the 5MP camera. I use my other Nokia phone a lot for camera taking and internet. so I'll see how it goes.

So there ended my long day with miserable rain and slept soundly that night!... I will be playing with my new phone in the next coming few days, I am such a tech geek with the amount of technology I have and not to mention I already wear one such technology the CI implant lol!

Ooohh a new mobile phone, but which one?...

2010-03-17T13:03:00.006Z

Got a text from my mobile network stating that my contract's about to expire and am eligible for an upgrade. I'm a little overwhelmed with various phones available...

It really never bothered me as my number one priority when choosing a mobile phone was the ease of access to the internet, followed by a usable qwerty keypad then the quality of the call. That's all thrown out of the window due to the CI. The priorities have changed a bit but not that much. Since being a relatively new CI owner, I am mindful of new developments that happens with the CI that happens out of the blue such as the clarity/intelligibility of the sounds heard is increasing expediently. I am quite unsure when I will have this 'wow' moment when I can hear word for word, right now I can understand roughly around 20% but that's a gradual increase every month so it could well happen by the end of this year or into the next year and so forth. I am not rushing it but am quite patient. With this in mind, I need a phone that I can deal with in terms of sound quality. However most mobile phones of today have much better call quality than it was two/three years ago.

So which phone?.. most of my work colleagues have the 'must have' accessory of a Blackberry phone or an Iphone. Sure it's quite appealing due to the full qwerty keypad or the features of the Iphone. However I have a Itouch which I love but the iphone is slightly out of my reach as my phone calls do not go in the high figures, or I'd be throwing money after nothing.

What do I want in a phone? well I like the easy access to the internet and to my emails as I'm on the net most days as I deal with websites as part of my job. And the ability to type quickly without having to change characters via other key etc... keypad buttons or non-tactile keypad (touchscreen).

Hmmm, I'll have to go away and ponder a bit more about this and do some phone shopping at the weekend. Wonder which phone will be my new phone.... any advice on mobile phones is welcome.

Whoosh, wheeze, whoosh, wheeze, thump, thump...

2010-03-12T08:15:00.008Z

Just been on a first aid refresher course as I need to refresh my first aid skills after 3 years. It's the first time I've been with the CI. It was quite an interesting experience and finally after all these years I was able to discern the different sounds that those with laboured breathing sound like - asthmatic attack, heart attack, hyperventilating, lung damage and chest injuries. I didn't know that those with chest/lung injuries make a sucking sound when the person tries to breathe and the only way to stop it sucking was to slap on a clean plastic card i.e. credit card over the chest hole and seal it.

Also when I was doing some CPR, I've always heard the thumping of the chest as I was doing chest compressions but not the breathing part where the air is exhaled out. Normally I'd feel it on my cheek in between breaths. But now I CAN hear it - wheeeezzzee as the chest deflates. The other first aiders had some trouble sealing the mouths when giving the breath of life - you could hear the air escaping... I was absolutely flabbergasted to hear that. I hope to pass the exam later on today as it's only a two day refresher course. Some things have changed since the last refresher, some made a lot more sense than last time. And am pleased at how things have progressed since the last one and the onus on saving a patient's life is much greater than before.

update - good news - I'm re-certified again for another 3 years. The written exam and the assessments went very well and the other colleagues equally did well. I thought I'd stuff it up with my speech impediment that normally carries with the deafness, but no, my role playing patient understood every word I said including the assessor. The tutor who taught the refresher has personally confided in me that it was the first time that he's ever seen a deaf person doing the refresher first aid course. There were others doing it for the first time but never took the refresher. I simply said that's up to the individual and how they felt about it and as to whether to continue with it. Mind you first aid carries quite a responsibility as one is responsible for preserving life not making it worse. I have always done first aid ever since I did it at Brownies right through till now. I've lost count of how many refreshers I've been through but I did notice that certain things change through time due to health and safety and politics. It was interesting enough and was nice to update my knowledge of first aid.

Ooohh the cold...

2010-03-10T13:10:00.004Z

Recently with the cold spells we've been experiencingncing of late in ol Blighty, I'm finding that the cold affects my CI ear not the HA ear. As the CI ear is exposed to the cold weather, it slightly gives me a very mild earache but it goes away once it's warmed up in a warm environment. I initially thought it was a fluke thing but have experienced it more than once. Wonder if it's my ear suffering from exposure as it's never been exposed to the cold weather from all these years from constant hearing aid wear or is it the internal metal components from the CI picking up the cold weather inside my ear?, I do sincerely it's not the latter...

Nine months now officially since I've been switched on, I've also noticed that if I relax a bit I hear better as opposed to concentrating at the sounds, weird init. After some research it turns out to be a well documented response by the brain. As someone put it - a very simple analogy to learn by - "Try to relax, then it will all become clearer". Yet so simple but profound and yet so true for those relearning new skills in whatever that may be. I certainly find this very true as I find this happens more and more when I relax in the evenings when listening or watching the television, the radio or some music.

Crunch, crunch....

2010-02-01T13:14:00.005Z

It must've hailed in the night as this morning at 6am, I walked out of the house to the bus stop in the dark with some street lighting. My CI (cochlear Implant) and HA (hearing aid) picked up the crunching sounds of the snow/hail/frost on the ground as I walked. I gathered quite a lot of information between my CI and HA from the crunching sounds. I alternated the CI and HA to hear the difference in sounds - switching HA off and moved the magnet on CI alternately.

1. The CI gave me a lot more information on the detail of the crunching sound, depth and the pitches.
2. The HA only gave me limited information, only gave me the overall crunching sound and no depth to the sound but it did give me the pitches of the crunchiness albeit on a lesser scale.
3. The HA simply amplified the sounds and transposed them down to the lower frequencies, thus distorting it slightly, any more amplification - turning the volume made the disortion worse - much to my surprise!
4. I found that the CI did not amplify or transpose them, it simply interpreted the sounds and sent it as electronic signal which my brain deciphered it as sound. If I turned the volume up slightly - it just made it louder without any loss of distortion but it was slightly uncomfortable.

Overall conclusion:
The CI gave me a richer information input compared to the HA. I have been walking around with the CI for 6 months before I started to wear the HA on the unimplanted ear to keep it stimulated and it was then I realised that I was getting an awful lot out of the CI.

The benefit of having cochlear implant DO vary from person to person as their hearing loss and experiences varies among the CI recipients. It has been found that a few was not getting much benefit out of the CI and some found equal benefit as it was with their HA's and others say it surpasses the benefit that they had with the HA with the CI. If that makes sense?

I suspect I belong to the latter group even it's been only 6 months and what a rollercoaster ride it has been so far and I'm not regretting it for a single minute.

Right at this moment, I'm a little preoccupied with my HA mould because it is irritating unimplanted my ear after not wearing it for 6months. I reckon it's the time it's had without a mould in that ear caused my ear to readjust itself back to its natural shape whereas for the past 30 odd years of my life, it's had an ear mould in it constantly since my very first ear mould at 6months old.

New Year's Resolution

2010-01-28T11:12:00.003Z

I know most people make a lot of New Year's resolution and I'm no exception to that except that I am one of those figures in statistics that we fall on the wayside of keeping to our new year's resolution after a few weeks of starting it. Am trying to get back on it as one of them was to keep fit again and have taken up running in this effect. The first few weeks were great as I eased myself into it and since the initial setback with the chest infection, I'm finding it hard to find the incentive to return to running again. But I did it by repeating the first few weeks - ease myself into it and it seems to be working well so far.

It's been nearly 7 months since switch on and I have managed to wear my HA on the un-implanted ear. It's really weird hearing sound on two different levels but the brain seems to be coping well with it. The first time I tried it before Christmas - it gave me such a headache that I took it off. And now I think it was due to the mapping that was since corrected. I'm trying to keep the un-implanted ear active in the hope of getting a sequential implant as I love my other implant so much but feel that I would benefit from having bilateral implants more than unilateral implant.

Sound wise, things are improving all the time on that front, the improvement curve has slowed down a bit as time progresses on. Now with the HA in the other ear, it will take a bit longer to acclimatise to having two auditory inputs together but insofar it's all positive. I'm finding it hard to remember the 'wow' moments as I get used to wearing the implant but I always remember this that CI are so much better and never take it for granted anymore. I am able to discern sounds a lot more around me and hearing the different pitches of speech but not hearing word for word at the moment as it's a bit of a roller coaster in this respect, but am recognising the most used words at the moment more consistently, i.e. hello, ok, thanks, bye bye etc...

Now I got to wait for my 9month follow up appointment.

Some start...

2010-01-12T12:56:00.003Z

I did not anticipate being unwell for a good week or so with a chest infection. In the last few days of recuperating I managed to settle down to listen to the audiobook properly. It is hard going at first, then I realised that I was listening subconsciously to something else so I put on some headphones. It helped for a while but had to stop as it was becoming quite taxing and felt tired already after 40 minutes of listening. Hopefully the day will come when I can listen effortlessly. For some reason I find the male voices easier to listen whereas most CI recipients find the female voices easier - I thought this was quite interesting. At least my appreciation for music is becoming more rounder and fuller than before and am now able to pick out the lyrics, it's not 100% but am getting there. Strangely enough I found Michael Jackson's songs are easier to follow as opposed to listening to country music or heavy metal. I like the wide variety of music to cater for all tastes. I do have some favourites from each genre (well not all). I wonder if it's because I used to listen to some of the songs more than others and developed an auditory memory of it?... I thought this was impossible for those who are prelingually deaf.

Soon it'll be my 9 month follow up in March. I think another trip is needed to the audiologists as I've been finding that I've been turning up the volume up a bit to compensate for some sounds. so a tweaking is in order.

I'm looking forward to February and March, as I'll be attending two events, one is a convention for genealogists - should be interesting as this will be my first time with the implants on, the last time I went there, it was pure cacophony of sounds milling around the place and I felt quite disorientated that I took my hearing aids off. Hopefully with the implants, I'll be able to be more in control but who knows.

And the other event, is just for pure entertainment in the afternoon - a Musical in the London West End - Sister Act. I'll be going there with fellow minded CI people for fun. I think for most CI people it may be their first time to watch and listen to a musical in a theatre, it's my second time to the theatre. The first time I went with CI was to see the Shaolin Monks doing their martial Arts stuff - quite impressive displays and some storytelling too. I used to practice martial arts before I was forced to stop due to lack of time getting to the Dojo in time.

Hello 2010...

2009-12-31T12:57:00.005Z

Happy New Year everyone, hope everyone had a good 'hearing' Christmas. Shame the telly was not up to it either. I spent most of my Christmas either doing things around the house or listening to my audio tapes. Yes I have managed to get round to it.

Boy it's a little hard going listening as the audiotapes are nothing like children's audiotapes where the pace and pitches is different. I've been listening to Christopher Lee and Joan Hickson narrating a few passages from Agatha Christie's books. It was nice to be able to recognise the distinctive voices of the actors. I've watched a couple of Dracula films with Christopher Lee and his voice never changes - always this deep gravelly voice and the light voiced of Joan Hickson as she played Miss Marple a couple of years back. A couple of months ago when Christopher Lee was a guest on some TV programme and I weren't paying attention, I recognised the voice straight away and turned round to see if I was right - indeed I was! I will endeavour as part of my New Years resolutions to keep up the audio-book listening/reading going.

Now that the snow's disappeared to be replaced by some infrequent rain here and there and cold spells. It's been quite freezing of late and had to wrap up warm between commutes to work and home.

On New Year's eve - London was a little bit like ghost-town at 7am in the morning and the roads were fairly free of traffic. I suspect that most people have opted to stay at home and to see the New Year in and making a lot of resolutions for the coming year.

Luckily my operated ear has not been showing any signs of being affected by the cold weather. I think the real test is when the summer comes as I've always found that the heat and humidity makes a bad combination for hearing aids as it makes my ear quite sticky and clammy. The cochlear processor is bigger than the conventional hearing aid so I'm a bit concerned about the moisture issue. But I'll wait and see what happens when summer comes.

I hope this coming year will be more of a positive note as the past year has been one wild roller-coaster ride and would be more happier to have a more gentle roller-coaster ride.

So here's a glass to welcome in the new year in with a quote from Edward Payson Powell

The Old Year has gone.
Let the dead past bury its own dead.
The New Year has taken possession of the clock of time.
All hail the duties and possibilities of the coming twelve months!

Merry Christmas everyone!

2009-12-24T11:51:00.008Z

Well it's that time of the year again and one little difference this time - we got snow! whoo hoo. Had fun walking through the snow hearing it crunching and sloshing around and other people walking on it. There was some dog owners out there and some of these dogs like snow and others don't like it. It was funny watching and hearing one dog trying to keep his paws free of snow by flicking/shaking his paws every time he lifts them out of the snow and down again. I was hearing the snow thudding against the wooden fence and crump of the snow against snow.

Even I could hear the differences on the road when driving around in this weather. Previously I would feel for the difference by the wheel or the car. But now i can hear it, ice sounds a lot quieter than normal roads and that tells me that there's ice so take some caution driving on it. it's brilliant being able to hear these distinct differences on the roads in this weather. Even I was driving on the motorway I passed a salt gritter and heard the salt/grit hitting the car and on the road as I passed the gritter.

Managed to do all the Christmas shopping and all there's left to do is to cook the Christmas dinner, so I would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas!

Down to 15

2009-12-08T09:01:00.006Z

I was suffering from unexplained headaches that forced me to make an appointment to see the audiologist and the doctors this week to see if it's either my eye or ear is causing the problem.

The audiologists came up first, we went through the mapping and the culprit was found quite quickly, and that particular frequency was turned off which brought me immediate relief from the headaches. So I'm down from 16 to 15 and I also discovered that particular frequency was making me feel a bit nauseous no matter how low it was. I agreed to have this mapping without this frequency to see how I go with it and another mapping with it turned on so I can try again at a later time to see if it's a temporary problem or not. The audiologist has offered to make an appointment for me to see the Ear consultant for further investigations but I declined at this point as I felt it was a bit premature. But I agreed to report back to the audiologist next week after a week of this. I think it may be a permanent solution. They also turned down the overall loudness as I was finding it a bit uncomfortable and wondered if my ears were becoming too sensitised, will have to wait and see.

But it brought me unexpected wow moments, as I was waiting at the bus stop to catch my travel home as I had finished early. I was scouring the bus times in the rain and I heard this very clearly - 'sixteen point oh six' and understood that very clearly amidst the rain and it matched the bus time I was looking for that I said thanks without any prompting. Thought 'ooohh - what's happening here?!' so continued to listen out and it happened again when I heard this 'next stop please'. I was dumbfounded that I could hear that clearly above the bus noise on-board, he wasn't even shouting or mumbling his words.

I hurried home in the rain and settled myself down for the evening watching a bit of telly and noticed some more things - Cheryl Cole - she has got a quite strong northern accent and I'd never noticed this when she's in one of the adverts. I could tell the Welsh as there's certain twang to their accent, but northern is a bit different - a bit closer to Yorkshire style.

I was quite pleased with these developments. So much that the next morning at work I decided to ring the speaking clock -a service for the blind, and heard word after word, my jaw hit the desk in amazement but I am still having issues to listening to my colleagues without lip-reading, so that will come in due course (I hope!) and to be able to have a normal conversation on the phone eventually (fingers crossed). With these great developments has spurred me on to make time to read the audiobooks with a greater urgency.

Fire Alarms

2009-12-02T12:53:00.006Z

Had my first taste of work fire alarm going off with the CI, I could never hear it with my hearing aids as it was a bit too high pitched. But this time round I heard it full and square between my eyes. Gawd, it's really high pitched.

It went off in the afternoon and we waited to see if it was a fire alarm check as they do it every week on a morning, but this was in the afternoon and that inevitably spelt 'evacuate!'. I was at my desk and listened for a few seconds when it first went off and then got up, grabbed my coat and some people were looking at amazement that I didn't need to be informed that the fire alarm has gone off. People started milling around towards the fire exits and then a long trek down the stairwell to the ground floor, we're a good couple of floors up. I did notice the loudness of the fire alarms varied as one walks down the stairwell. At one point it nearly made me feel nauseous cos it was quite piercing. I'd never ever ever thought I'd hear it as it should be... and no wonder a lot of hearies hate them with a passion because of that piercing/wailing at a high frequency. A lot of the people were calm and talking loud over the alarms which helped offsetting the piercing wailing of the fire alarm. I did have a fire alarm pager assigned to me but it's been in the drawer for a good couple of months! I'm thinking of handing it in..

Have you CI users had this effect with the fire alarms?

General update on the CI so far
I have been experiencing some up and downs with the CI in the last few days.. But it's a lot better now. I did experience some buzzing/whine that I could not figure it out. At one point it really irritated me almost making me reach for an appt at the hospital to tune it out, I think it was my brain figuring it out cos soon afterwards the whine/buzzing became amplified for a moment and then went back to normal and now it's hardly there and noticed a lot more clarity in what I'm hearing at the moment. Very strange indeed, unfortunately I'm still neglecting the audio-books but I do have some time off planned so I can organise my time better.

The TV with the digital sound has made a lot of difference and noticed that I'm starting to pick up a few words here and there without looking. Could this be the start of it? Six months it's taken. I appreciate that the brains of various individuals vary, me included but I'm constantly amazed at what it can do. And the bummer thing is that we only use a fraction of it when there are loads of untapped potential waiting there to be tapped/utilised. I'm just going with the flow with the changes everyday no matter how tiny it is.

Haaahaa! Got Channel 5 back plus more

2009-11-20T13:01:00.007Z

Who would've known that DVB means Digital Video Broadcasting?!, managed to change the aerial over to Digital and got freeview! I knew my TV has a inbuilt digital card but the family was dithering that it wasn't and that we would have to buy freeview boxes. Well the installation of the aerial and sorting out the pic did cost a bit but we all chipped in so everyone's happy and the bonus - it didn't require the freeview boxes after all. Freeview came with 80 channels, of which 20 are radio channels. So I have the bog standard analogue terrestrial channels plus a few cable channels - too numerous to mention here but it has a couple of my favourite channels - Sky and Virgin 1.

The picture and sound is sooo much better and I can leave the subtitles on permanently whenever I change a channel or two. I must really stop relying but it's hard breaking over 20yrs worth habit of watching TV with subtitles. Heck I was there when it was in the early stages in the 1970's and the number wasn't even triple eight back then '888', think it was 1 something...

However I did notice that the subtitles sometimes didn't quite catch everything was being said and some of the subtitles were modified due to the speed of dialogue. The live news was particularly prone to this and it does make for an hilarious viewing when the live subtitles misrepresent the word that was said and put out a different word. It was nice to have this confirmation, because for years I would watch tv with this nagging feeling that the subtitles weren't being true. I felt it could be due to other factors such as speed of dialogue going on and that the subtitles cannot match up and instead was modified in pre-recordings before transmission, such as Eastenders, all that drama programmes.

Today another moment - as I was working away at work, I heard this sound "brrrbrrrr....squeak, squeak, plonk" and it repeated again for a couple of times. As I heard it again - I realised that I recognised the sound of a powerdrill so I turned around to see if I was right and indeed I was. The facilities people were doing some maintenance work and a powerdrill was being used to extract the screws from the wall.

It has been quite windy of late along with some rain. The noise of the various winds were a bit like music to my implant as it was 'whoosing, screaming, wooofing, howling' as I walked around. I had my windcheater on and the fabric was making sounds from the wind hitting it, from a quiet slow 'puhpuh' from a low wind to loud quicker 'puhpuh' from a faster moving wind. Besides I felt warm in that windcheater anyway. I'd hate to think if I hadn't worn the windcheater - I'd be quite cold in that weather.

Darn it - what a wet weekend!

2009-11-16T09:48:00.007Z

Saturday was a really blustery day, high winds and rain everywhere. It was a little perilous driving around but it was needed. I had to take my boys to the vet as one needed looking at and the other was for a diabetes checkup. The vet is very pleased with the diabetes boy despite developing full blown cataracts in both eyes but it doesn't really bother him at all as he has really poor eyesight after all. She took an x-ray of the other one as I think he has heart issues despite being on antibiotics for 2 weeks at time for it only to return a week later and had to put him back on it and it cleared up again and it came back once taken off which led me to think that there's something else at play here.

I could hear his funny breathing very well but his demeanour has been fine, no evidence of being plagued by pneumonia or a tumour from experience. Will get the results later on this week.

I did not expect to hear the winds howling/whistling all over the place with my CI and the pitter patter of the rain in their varying strengths. I even heard a tree branch creak and snapping off close by. I was telling mother that I did not expect this so much information about the weather with the CI. All I knew with the hearing aids was wind and rain- that's it no additional information at all. I do recognise the heaviness of the rain if I'm next to it but with the CI I can hear it from a distance which was a nice revelation! I even heard the car being buffeted by the winds on the roads and the varying degrees of the rain hitting the car to the squeaking of the windscreen wipers. I even noticed the road being covered in mini puddles of rain, they sound different as the car wheels go over it in certain places.

So was stuck at home in the afternoon as the weather deteriorated considerably so spent it watching TV. I even noted that in the adverts if they've been on TV often enough - I was able to make out the dialogue. I could never been able to do this before and it says something about that repetition indeed does work!

Great weekend

2009-11-16T09:33:00.004Z

A couple of Saturdays ago, it was well overdue for a school reunion of my old grammar school - by 20 years!, I went with some anticipation but all those worries simply dissipated when I met up with them in London. It was really nice to see my old classmates and catching up on those years gone past.

I learned that 3 of them have got a CI of some kind, I was telling a ex-classmate how funny it was because each one of us have a different make of CI, one has Med El, one has Cochlear UK and the other one has a Baha. The guy had bilateral Baha due to other issues but the rest of us CI has one. Only one is wearing bimodal - CI and HA together. We all talked about how great it was and how well we did with them and our progresses to date. The rest of our classmates did not mind us wearing CI's which was a pleasant surprise. So out of all of us 4 has CI.

In all it was a great afternoon out and I think there's another one planned for next year so as soon I hear of it - I'll mark it on my calendar.

Still got analogue TV - 4 channels & CI progress to date

2009-11-16T09:03:00.004Z

Well it's been nearly a month since the TV saga. Turns out that I'm in the poor reception area for freeview or freesat. *Sighs* back to the drawing board - checked out Sky and Virginmedia. Already have virginmedia but wanted to change over to Sky but turns out that one needs a phone line and I don't have a phone line to the room that I want Sky in. *Grrgghh*, looks like I'm stuck with Virgin Media as there's already a cable into the room, just fork out for another box...*sighs*. Will find out more once I ring VirginMedia and fingers crossed that I'll get some discount or one off deal of some kind... Here goes nothing.

Anyway back to my CI journey. It's now nearly 6months since activation. And I have to say that I'm still experiencing some issues with speech but nowadays that I'm finding that I'm starting to recognise some words without looking, mostly common words like "bye bye, hello, how are you" - those kind of words. But I still have some ways to go.

I have been getting comments on how clearer my speech has become. I was totally unawares of that, that it was happening without any considerable effort from me. Sounds like my brain is subconsciously processing sounds better and is being reflected in my speech. I have not been offered speech by the CI unit as they deemed that my speech is completely passable (?!). I really need to focus my efforts on listening to the audiotapes that I have been grossly neglecting in all these months. Lately all I want to do when home from work - is to relax and unwind from a hectic/busy day at work and my weekends are always tied up with things to do. If I want to do well at this - I must make some time to listen to those audiotapes.

Technical hiccup - TV

2009-11-04T16:14:00.005Z

As I mentioned in previous blog that I had no analogue TV. Well some fiddling of the TV cables managed to sort out the problem and got all my TV channels back minus CH5 (it's quite a poor picture) so cancelled the set up box from virgin.

Think it'll be cheaper to upgrade to a digital aerial and a freeview box. So looking at various options at the moment. Got to pay for an engineer to upgrade the aerial as part of health and safety (groans).

Been doing a lot of thinking lately and thinking of plunging into a campaign for a second implant as I'm doing so well with one but would feel better with two as two ears are better than one. So am doing some research to see what the possibilities are and may have to lobby certain people to help me on the journey for a second one, not sure how long it will take. I'll keep this updated as time goes on. I do really love this implant, it's sooo much better than the hearing aids, sure it takes some getting used to but I find the benefits and what I can hear with it is fantastic.

No TV for 4 weeks

2009-10-29T11:53:00.004Z

Gah, the analogue signal to my tv has cut out and was greeted by the error message posted by virginmedia that the channel's no longer available. I only expected this for Channel Five as it was well publicised in the media that the analogue signal for CH5 in my area will be switched off and digital should take over. Instead to my dismay all terrestrial channels originally on the analogue format has been switched off. I had only two choices - fork out for a digital antenna plus an engineer to fit it or get a second set up box. I went for the latter one, I could have it installed early but had plans at the weekend so stumped for a few weeks later.

So no TV in the meanwhile, been using the DVD player a lot lately rewatching DVD's in my collection. Then my old trusty DVD player gave up the ghost at the weekend, so got a new one and already got problems with it. I cannot do anything about it till the weekend when I have some free time so a week or two of no telly basically. Resorted to using my computer to watch catch up TV, and noticed that Channel 5 on demand has no subtitles so I couldn't watch the Gadget Show with subtitles which I thought was pretty bad. BBC1,2 and other channels were very good and provided subtitles where it states it has. ITV and Channel 4 not all of the programmes had subtitles when it was advertised. I know that it had them on the main TV but not on catch up TV. I've already sent them an email stating the importance of subtitles for the HOH. Yet to await a reply. I also read some books to kill the time and went through 3 books easy - yoikes.

4 months on - Halloween

2009-10-22T11:42:00.009+01:00

Been laid up with a cold in the last few days. It's the first one since I've been switched on and I have always found that when wearing hearing aids the benefit of the hearing aids becomes neglible when having a cold. This time round - the problem is not there anymore which is 'music' to my ears. I've always suffered from colds every now and then and each time I can't hear very well. It's as if someone's put in more cotton wool balls in your ears - muffling the sound even further, that turning up the volume doesn't improve it, instead it makes it worse.

Well 4 months been and gone. Had my 3mth checkup a couple of weeks ago and they're very very pleased with my progress, despite the little hiccup with the tests. My only gripe is that I could not get the other ear done as I feel I would even get better benefit by hearing in stereo than mono. As they say two ears is better than one. Had the retuning a while ago and it's a lot much better now not so in much my face anymore.

Recently in the last few days, I began to hear the various fireworks going off all over the place on different days in the run up to Halloween. Can't believe they started early this year (UK) and seeing fireworks for sale in the shops!.

One thing really brought a smile to my face as I was walking home from work that the sounds of fireworks varied according to distance. I've never had this ability previously to hear how far away the fireworks were with the HA's. I realised that I heard the actual shooting of the firework and the 'Poh' and 'poppings' as the firework explodes in multitude of colours. I definitely heard the big bangers very clearly that I could do with a double twin cos I keep jumping out of my skin whenever I hear one. When I had the HA's I only heard the big Bangers. Shows how much has changed. As for the distance thing - I was able to tell how far away they were as I could see some going off in the distance as soon I heard the sounds, I was very pleased with that.

That I went home with a big smile on my face and everyone wanted to know what brought the smile on. I told them and their faces in response were a gem (absolute shock and "really?!?! you could hear that". Yup I replied, I thought that having a single CI would handicap the location sourcing wise but its not that bad... Sure I have a dead area around the non-implanted ear.

I hope to continue on this journey and the experiences experienced gives me more confidence.

Oh yeah - all my tastebuds are now back, that tiny sliver of my tongue was devoid of any taste sensations for 4 months is now gone, yipee. Now I need to get some ladoo to nibble on!

Early Starts

2009-10-14T20:04:00.003+01:00

A few days ago in my usual commute in the mornings. I usually walk up to the bus stop to catch my coach into London. I heard some squeaking and wondered where it came from so i followed the sound and saw two hedgehogs having a right barney. They heard me coming and there was a scrabble for the hole that goes into a garden of the house. The hole is tiny enough but doable for a hedgehog. Both wanted to go into it first and ended up fighting.

What a sight, it really brightened up my morning thinking about these two hedgehogs.

Too many hours - October

2009-10-12T15:35:00.003+01:00

In the past few weeks I've been working over my stipulated hours by working more hours voluntarily, as work is asking for some help in preparing the website for relaunch in October. I've been finding myself working late evenings and all day Saturdays. In a way I'm grateful for the distraction as there's so much things going on around me that would either make me go insane or become an emotional wreck.

Still waiting for that appt for a re-tune up, but luckily I asked the audiologist to put my old program as no 2 while the newest program was on 1. In the last few weeks I'm quite happily pottering on with prog 2 with occasional sojourn to prog 1 to see how it goes, and still I can't deal with the new program due to the high pitchness. I'm still re-training my brain to the new sounds.

At the weekend in a ghost office, i poured some fizzy drink into a mug, I'd never heard the fizziness so loud as I poured it in, it was quite nice to hear that. I don't have fizzy drinks all that often so it was a nice treat.

I went to a local CI users group meeting in north london, it was nice to meet other CI users and to hear of their experiences with their CI's. We discussed at a length about music and I was saying that I'm having to go through all my record collections on my itouch and trimming some stuff out as they sounded different. All agreed that music sounds a bit different with the CI but am grateful that that I'm able to remember how they sounded before and noticing the difference with the CI. They had some useful pointers and that the 'normalness' should come in due course. At the moment I'm still thinking that some sounds do sound weird! lol.

Strangely enough I found the telephone whenever someone is speaking out of it, it sounds different to the normal human voice that we're accustomed to, the same goes for the radio but not the TV. Strange uh?.

Insofar the journey so far has been really interesting and full of revelations. Having the CI support group and the meetings is helpful and supportive of each other's CI journey. Been hearing about the new Cochlear Nucleus 5 and the Med El CI's. I am still not budging from my CI as I'm soo happy with it.

What a downer

2009-09-15T20:43:00.004+01:00

Had my 3 month review. The tune up went okayish and then saw the audiologist who then tested me on lipreading/listening and listening only. I fared better on the lipreading/listening part than the listening only, i found the results were quite dramatic, quite a steep drop from the last testing to this one. I was a bit disappointed but I reckon that my concentration is tied up elsewhere as I'm having some issues at work and home at the moment.

It's a bit full on at the moment at work and emotionally that I'm finding that I'm neglecting my auditory training. I think I may ask to have another tune up as I'm not quite happy with this mapping as the high pitches has been set up a little too high that it drowns out other sounds. Strangely enough - it's making me feel as if I wanted to burst into tears for absolutely no reason. Not that I've burst into tears just yet, but am tempted to do so.

Got the funeral next week for my grandfather who passed away last week. Not looking forward to that.

Not so much concentration anymore

2009-09-11T13:39:00.002+01:00

I'm finding that conversations is becoming a bit easier and I'm not concentrating so hard, I think the brain is finally making sense and I hope the audio books had something to do with that. I found reading the audio books hard at first but perserverance and repetition helped and that each time I listened to it I was able to make it out without much persuasion. A tick in the box for that one I think.

I'm finding that I'm becoming more aware of my surroundings more, particularly outside. The squealing brakes of the london buses makes me sway a bit before normality returns. Gawd, they're so high pitched. Lorries are not immune from this I find either! London is a hopscotch of traffic lights at every few meters or so that one is constantly hearing brakes, revving and the occasional blaring of horns at others.

Got my 3 month review next week, hope it will be all positive results all around. Will be making notes for my record. I have been keeping a separate log but it's not been updated for ages due to the events that happened lately. I'll have to let them down slowly, I think they'll understand.

What a Month!

2009-09-11T13:14:00.002+01:00

What a month/s indeed, Mid August to September - so much happened and am still reeling from it. 2 Funerals, two colleagues on holidays leaving me with three person's worth of work for nearly two weeks and that walking around with a faulty microphone!

Back in August I attended a funeral of a close family friend up in North Wales. I knew it would happen eventually as he was fighting bowel cancer and failed. He had two courses but it spread so much that the treatment would not work anymore. The funeral service was very nice and light along with some laughter. I remember him with his positive outlook and his strange/funny jokes. Even at the end of the service, his last request that he made us sing a song which made us laugh. I bet he's laughing up there that day. I thought I'd shed a tear or two but no the service wasn't all that gloomy but light hearted.

Saw my childhood friend with her hubbie and kids at the funeral. I'd forgotten how long it was that I since last saw her - must be over 10 years. Did not get much chance to have a good natter with her catching up with times.

I noticed at the funeral how the sounds carry in different types of building, a crematorium, pub and parish church. I found that the crematorium carried the sounds over better and not so echoey which was nice. But in the parish church - a small one, it was packed with people and there were three ordained people there giving their piece of euology and they had to use the microphone.

I think I heard the Welsh accent of these people for the first time! it took be a bit of time understanding what they were saying initially but my childhood friend has a liverpudlian accent and her mum has a newcastle accent. Talk about accents. I am more acquainted with american accents due to the imported TV drama series such as Ghost Hunters, Ace of Cakes, Crime investigations, CSI, CSI Miami, NCI etc.. There was a series with Jamie Oliver's travels across the USA and heard the ol texan drawl which reminded me of a friend at college years past and was thinking of her suddenly that day.

As you've may have read in my previous posts that I was left carrying the boat at work initally along with a faulty microphone. Well I'm glad they're back and my CI is back to normal. It was a really weird and pressurised week and I'm still here sane and still working as hard as usual.

There's been a change of processes which is making my life a lot easier of late but it meant alot of spring cleaning through the files, making me stay behind for an hour or two to complete it for two weeks.

Then came the bombshell early September, I knew that grandpa had a minor heart attack, recovered well but this time he had a chest infection which initally responded to antibiotics well at first and discharged as a result, instead he was back in the hospital with the same complaint. The antibiotics were not working anymore. We all knew what it meant and waited for that confirmation. I saw him briefly before he passed away that night. He had good innings - he was 92 yrs old. So we're just preparing for the funeral which will come up soon. Hence the title - 'What a month'.

Must read and listen to audio books

2009-09-02T13:49:00.004+01:00

My parents bought me some unabridged books with cd to help with my re-auditory training. I've managed to get it downloaded to my Itunes but with the itunes update it really mucked up my music library that i spent most of the day sorting it out.

In desperation, I gave up and left it. And now I'm trying to find time to sit down and read it but my day is soo packed.

Mental note ' must make time to listen and read'...

The are books by Agatha Christie and is designed for those learning English for the first time. It has 4 speakers, all known in the TV and films, lending their voices to the book. There are six volumes I think and in each one there's a different readers all lending their distinctive voices. I was listening to Christopher Lee and was surprised how I remembered he used to sound on TV on his famous roles - such as the vampire!...

I'm looking forward to listening to Margaret Rutherford among the few yet to listen.

Nearly three months post activation

2009-09-02T13:36:00.003+01:00

With my attitude to sounds which meant that I've always had my hearing aids on all the time. I did never take them off once unless it involved water or sleeping. With this constant sound coming at me really helped me to acclimatise myself with the cochlear implant quite well.

Now I find environmental sounds are not an issue anymore and was able to glean more information from it which I really enjoy. Speech is softer than environmental sounds and more complex so that will take time to come to the fore but I am finding that I am able to understand people better than before without the muddled sounds from the hearing aids. But I can now hear male and female voices, and their pitches from talking quietly to loud and children babbling, laughing and screaming babies..

I had the opportunity to hold a baby as it was being fed his afternoon meal. I was really appreciating the sounds he was making with his food. If he's hungery he'll whimper and make mouth movements indicating 'I'm hungry - please feed me'. And his 'yumyumyum' sounds with puddings. He's really partial to apple puree puddings. He also chortles and giggles when fussed. And that 'plaintive cry with different modes ranging from - 'my nappy needs changing / I'm teething / I'm plainly tired and wants to sleep properly without noise'...

At home, I find the analogue ticking clocks quite annoying especially when it's all quiet, but at other times I barely notice it. Which gives me a real appreciation of what you hearing guys go through and do feel for those who have hyperacusis. I don't think I'll be changing those clocks anyway as it is bearable for now (I think).

There was something on near where I live as I drove out passing certain roads and saw the road steamers chugging their way to the show ground for the annual agriculture show. One could hear the chugging, hissing of the steam engines providing power. And at other place i came across a few horses on a country road on their excercise run. I could hear the clattering of the hooves on the gravel, tarmac and grass. I've only heard one sounds of hooves with the hearing aids and that's metallic not the differentation of the metal interacting with the tarmac, gravel or grass. - That really surprised me a bit, that extra information was most revealing and appreciated.

I'd be most interested to see what the 3month checkup brings... so far it's been a really positive experience with the cochlear implant and wish that I could have the other ear done for a truly stereoscopic sound but I'll have to do with analogue sound for now.

Learn this lesson well

2009-09-02T13:23:00.002+01:00

For the first time in three months I faced a crisis at work. I realised that I was wearing the 12hr battery and knew it would time to wear out at around 2pm that day and had not brought my other 12hr battery with me that day. I have always ensured that with the 12hr battery, ALWAYS take the second 12hr battery with you!. So that morning after realising what has happened, I texted my father to see what his work movements were, he works on a call out basis to the hospitals, insitutions and what not. Turned out that he's at home and is not planning to come into London unless called out, so that ruled out a delivery of the second battery. So I thought i'd ride it out and see what happens.

Since wearing the battery at 5.30am that morning, and timed to fade out at around 2/3pm as I've noticed it always does that. so came 2.30pm, still going strong, got a meeting at 3pm. 3pm came and went and meeting was cancelled - still going strong.. Hmmm I thought, fair enough the office is quieter than usual. Maybe with the volume of sounds to process takes certain amount of processing power. 3.30 came and went and then hometime came 4.30. Locked up for the day and left the office to enter the lifts to exit the building. And some sort of freaky thing - it faded out at finishing time. freaky or what... so came off the processor and made my way home in the silence. Had a slight tinnitus but it dies off quite quickly - I suspected that it was the residual electricity activity from the processor petering out as there was no more coming in. I could only hear real low pitched sounds from 120db from various sources, such as a road digger, planes. Other than that it was silence. It's really weird walking around without the cochlear implant on and it's only 3 months since I've been switched on.

As you can see...

2009-09-02T13:04:00.002+01:00

I've been uber busy in the last few weeks leaving me mentally and physically exhausted!. Never again do the work of 3 people in nearly two weeks lol!

Had a quite few embarrassing moments with the cochlear implant...

A week or more so ago, I noticed that the sounds weren't coming through so well on the two programme settings that uses the T-hook ear microphone than the behind the ear microphone. For just over a week or so, I'd been walking around with a faulty microphone and the sound quality on the 3rd program setting was not as good as the other two. You see the third program setting was meant to be used with the Direct connect earhook used for connecting to MP3 players and the background noise was reduced down to 30%. No wonder I wasn't hearing so well for a week or so.

So I made an emergency appt with the audiologist one afternoon. On the day I went in to have the processor checked out but it was not feeding information from the two programmes. The audiologist was getting a bit concerned and tried various things to get it working, it involved changing the processor, the head piece and the T-microphone ear hook and the programme settings on the computer which updates the processor.

Nothing.... She got a colleague to help out and they thrashed several things about, changing this an that.... Only to find that the microphone ear hook was faulty. And there I was sitting there saying 'nope - hear nothing' and then heard the familiar 'beep beep beep' - it startled me so much as it was back at normal volume as I was listening it at a reduced capacity for a week. I 'yelped' in pain and frantically turning the volume down on the processor. Laughter and relief ensued. Gawd.. the volume setting was at the max on the processor during that session - almost blew my ear off from the laughter and my yelping that I stopped yelping mid way through and 'shshhed' the audiologists while I reset the volume control. My left eye shedded a tear or two from that brief pain. It's like having a pain stick emanating from the ear very briefly and goes away immediately as it came.

At last I got it back, I was able to resume my re-auditory training in everyday sounds.

10th - 16th August ( Monday - Sunday)

2009-08-17T13:19:00.003+01:00

Lots of work this week as two of my colleagues are off on holidays this week so I'm doing the work of three people. An oversight HR says! at least it'll not happen again. Never felt so pressurised all week getting things done on time. Am looking forward to seeing my colleagues return soon next week!

No new sounds so far and it seems that everything sounds a lot more normal/natural. Not so artificial any more. Speech is slowly coming on and am not having to ask people to repeat themselves which is a bonus so far. Parents and I are feeling the strain of the implant when I'm trying to understand them and asking them to talk as they usually do but they keep forgetting as 30 plus years is hard to undo. They're trying their best.

Drove up to Milton Keynes to look around Ikea as I need some ideas for some new furniture as some of my furniture needs replacing. It was packed on Sunday, unbelievable. I thought the recession would keep people away but then I remembered that Ikea prices are really quite favourable *duh* why did I go there - of course the prices D'oh!. I keep getting a lot of grey moments there lol.

8th & 9th August (Saturday & Sunday)

2009-08-17T13:17:00.003+01:00

Nice and relaxing weekend, tried to update my itunes so I can download the latest music and organise my music folders. But the latest update from itunes severed my connections to my music files in the library so spent most of the weekend fixing it. Have given up fixing it till when I have more time. Am so busy with other chores, with the lovely weather - I spent time outside more than inside.

No new sounds to experience so far. The last two weeks have been pretty full on in terms of experience of the theatre and cinema.

7th August (Friday)

2009-08-11T14:07:00.001+01:00

Caught the early train back to work in London, caught the fast train in, except there weren’t many passengers on board until we approached London that it started to fill up. It was a really nice ride back into London without many people on board and it was a smooth ride. It’s so much better than my usual train line near home, which is in dire need of a revamp as the lines needs repairing as keep hear the clunking of linked lines to other lines.

Got home in good time, but exhausted, quickly cleaned out the boys. And retired for the night.

6th August (Thursday)

2009-08-11T14:06:00.003+01:00

Normal morning and finishing early today. Got an speech therapist appt this afternoon and then on the train up to Oxford.

At the speech therapist, we discussed speech sounds and practised some more. I asked if it was ok to start listening to audiobooks to which she replied yes. But warned me to take it slowly and for a few minutes at a time, which I agreed to, I always find listening quite taxing without any lipreading but I hope it will help me decipher speech a little bit more. It’s only 2 months since I’ve been switched on and I can say that the sounds are much better than my hearing aids’. Sorry if I seem to keep repeating the wonders of CI than the HA’s. Sorry – it has transformed my life so quickly, I thought it would take months literally to understand sound around me.

Time to catch the train to Oxford, while I was at the terminal getting the tickets from a ticket machine, I realised it beeps when pressing buttons like the cashpoint (hole in the wall). The terminal itself is quite noisy with lots of people and a few trains were warming up, moving away or coming to a stop. The brakes on some of the trains as they come in the terminal has that familiar squealing or crunching sounds of the brakes and the wheels contacting with the metal reminds me so much when I used to travel by train when I was a kid. No traditional carriages where one would open the doors outwards, instead they clunk, groans and squish open or close of the electronic doors of the carriages. There were announcements making all over the place, I could not decipher what was being said but did catch snippets of it when it said destination or stopping points of a such train that was due to depart or arrive.

Caught my train and found a window seat, as it was departure time – a bell sounded and the doors clunked close, and then the engine revved up a bit and the train pulled away from the stop out to the countryside. I caught the fast train to Oxford so it made a few stops on the way up than a local train service which meant stopping at every point up the way. While I was sitting admiring the scenery, the train is very smooth and consistent engine sound humming away and only to slow down when approaching a station to drop off/pick up passengers. And when moving away the sounds do not change all that much. The train windows were open and wind were coming through but not that noisy but pleasant as that day it was really humid and hot with sporadic showers. Arrived in Oxford in good time to be greeted by the rain at the station!

5th August (Wednesday)

2009-08-11T13:48:00.001+01:00

Normal day at work, noticed the paper rustling is not so loud anymore, neither is the wheel of the mouse. Seems that the brain is already categorising the sounds and tuned them down (?) and I’m also noticing that in the evenings I have to tweak the volume up a bit as if the sounds had got quieter for a reason and also noticed that in the mornings I have to turn it down for a few minutes before I return it to the normal 12’oclock position. Not sure what is happening here. I have used the programme two which is a louder program.

4th August (Tuesday)

2009-08-11T13:47:00.000+01:00

Normal day at work, no new sounds here to report. Just learned by text that I have to go up to Oxford overnight on Thursday as I have to meet with relatives in Oxford somewhere, so a train travel is on the cards.

Cinema tonight – Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the first half of a movie. As I took my seat at the cinema, the adverts started rolling – ‘Baaadaaadadadaa’ came the sound, it was ever so loud that it startled me; I had to turn the volume down quickly to a bearable level! How I felt for my friends that I’m able to turn it down and they couldn’t. I don’t remember the movies being this loud in the past. I wonder if it’s the new technology and someone forgot to cap off the sound levels. The music was ok but managed to catch half of the speech mostly on screen, those made off screen I just couldn’t make it out, time will only tell.

About 2/3rds way through the movie, the 24hr battery died on me but I had the forethought to take a spare just in case and am glad that I did. Quickly changed it over and played with the volume controls and then sat enthralled watching/listening to the movie. It was over two hours long and quite dark. Was sad to see one of the characters killed and the half blood prince revealed. I’ll have to re-read the book again. Came out of the movie quite late at night – 10.15pm, went straight to bed!

3rd August (Monday)

2009-08-11T13:46:00.000+01:00

Work day today, spent the most of the morning rustling up a document for the head honchos of the dept. No new sounds to report, finding speech hard going at the moment for some reason.

On the way home, I caught the local London bus to the coach stop where I catch my coach home. I only realised that I can finally hear the beeping of the doors when they open to let people off the bus as an auditory aid for the blind and announcements of where the bus was stopping and its end destination. I’ve noticed that some of the buses that this does not work or is on at all. I’m sure that some passengers have reported this. I was pleased that there was something else to hear among the usual sounds.

2nd August (Sunday)

2009-08-11T13:45:00.000+01:00

The house is so quiet except that I can hear the clocks going tick tock around the house. There’s nearly a clock in every room and was not aware of this pervading tick tock noise with the hearing aids. I did a little test to see how far away I could hear the tick tock and measured it about 10 feet away. Am surprised that the boys are ok with it as the clock is right above them and they’re ok with it. I can cope with it by tuning it out. Watched some telly and doing some work in the interim. The shredder is very noisy and was making my eyes jiggle a bit so I turned the CI volume down a bit just to get through it. That’s the shredding done. Out came the laptop as it needs updating – virus scan, software updates etc – left the laptop to update itself and only checking it periodically. *Bach music from phone plays* caught my attention – it’s a text from a friend asking if I would like to see the Harry Potter movie at the cinema and replied YES PLEASE!.. Tickets are sorted for Tuesday evening. I do not normally respond to my phone when it rings only when it vibrates, so it was another ‘wow’ moment there. These wow moments tends to jump out where one least expects it which is kind of nice but frustrating as I don’t quite register it until I stop myself and asking myself this question – did I hear that before with the hearing aid’s?

Went out to do some shopping with a friend, as we were walking along, I stopped talking and asked my friend what was that sound – it was almost recognisable I said to her in terms of the pattern it was emitting, she replied it’s the emergency services going past with sirens on. Ah so that’s the emergency services, hmmm, I’m so used to hearing it at lower frequencies than what they’re usually at – high frequencies. I think the higher frequencies needs a little more tweaking as it’s quite not there. The rest of the day went very quickly from watching cable channels catching up on TV that I missed while on holiday.

1st August (Saturday)

2009-08-11T13:44:00.000+01:00

London Coliseum Theatre today with friends, to see Chun Yi – the Legend of Kung Fu this afternoon, spent the morning doing chores so I don’t have to do them tomorrow. Caught the bus to London and met up with friends at Trafalgar Square. We were there early so we hung around the square, as we were chatting and looking around. Traffic was coming and going round the square and there was the tourist coach with the guide speaking to tourists in English and the sounds were coming out of the speakers of the coach telling the history of Trafalgar square and it’s historical significance with Horatio Nelson etc… lots of tourists milling round and taking photos and chatting away. There was the 4th plinth currently being used for a month by the public by an artist – Anthony Gormley’s One & Other staging in hour slots to do whatever they want to do. And on that day and time, there was a lady doing some movements and being absolutely silent but waving to the crowds, a bit odd I thought and did not know what she represented.

Went inside the coliseum to take our seats on the second balcony near the front and centre. Lights went down and Chinese ethereal music came on, then a bang and the Chinese martial artists came on stage beating fish bells. The fish bells sounded short - medium high pitched resonated knock. As the play progressed there was lots of sounds intermixed with music apart from the parts where the narrator comes on stage telling more about the ‘story’ of Chun Yi. He was so far away that I could not make out what he was saying apart from some words that I recognised as they appeared frequent enough in everyday talk. I recognised the voice – it was David Yip - from Brookside! I did NOT expect this happen in the theatre, I wanted it happen at home when a tv programme is on. Duh, another ‘wow’ moment there, also I noticed the sounds in the auditorium was not that loud compared to cinemas so no fiddling with volume was needed. The interval came on and lights came on, the hubbub went up again and saw two kids chatting quite excitedly about what they saw ‘did you see that *demonstrates movement* Pow, Pcheeuut’ ‘Yeah, that was brill!, what about that bit where they leaped off the stage, I thought they were going to die! *laughs*’ both kids then laughed and chatted more before tucking into some ice-cream. For a moment I thought I was hearing that well with partial lipreading, seems I did. Then the second half came on, the music changed from ethereal to malicious and then back to enlightenment. More martial moves and spotted the various martial art moves – Leopard, Frog, Monkey and Mantis. I really enjoyed this play and came out feeling good.

Caught the bus back home and told parents of the play and showed them the programme. They told me that they were pleased that I enjoyed the play and that they were going up to Wales to visit a family friend who’s dying of cancer and wanted to see him for the last time before the funeral.

27th July (Monday) - 31st July (Friday)

2009-08-11T13:42:00.004+01:00

Nothing to report here sounds wise. Spent all day going through the video reviewings, I will be doing this all week.

Friday – I have a hand over from a colleague who’s going to Nambia for two weeks (lucky guy!), he was explaining the jobs he does and it’s pretty much straightforward. He’s quite easy to understand despite that he’s softly spoken. My boss tells me that I will have a week on my own as my two colleagues will be on holidays. An oversight with the holiday booking – great!, so I told my other colleague to tie up as many ends before he goes and to give me an handover – he’s a wiz with excel macros and whatnot. I’m not!

25th July (Saturday) & 26th July (Sunday)

2009-08-04T13:27:00.004+01:00

'Ding' my eyes opened wide awake at 6am, drat! was hoping for a lie in this morning after an eventful week.

Did my usual chores and finished them mid morning and was already bored, so we decided to go out shopping in another town and spent the whole afternoon there window shopping and perusing shop goods before buying things there. It was nice to be out and about.

The new mapping is only marginally better than the last mapping and lots of things I were hearing were more informative. Speech is just starting to crystallise a bit but it's painfully slow.

The evening came and went without any ado.

Sunday

Nothing to report there really - just a typical boring Sunday. Spent it sorting out the holiday photos on the computer. The new graphics card is a little noiser than the previous graphics card but the speed of the program used in cojunction with the graphic card is so much better - faster! and much more detailed. Time flew by as I was tweaking away on the computer.

24th July (Friday)

2009-08-04T13:23:00.002+01:00

Work today, just about finished catching up on my work but noticed that I had loads of videos to review before I could allow them to be uploaded onto the website.

Just re-getting used to the new mapping again. No new sounds so far. A pretty normal day today.

23rd July (Thursday)

2009-08-04T13:17:00.002+01:00

Day off today as I have an appt at the hospital for another mapping and a session with the speech therapist. Saw the audiologist and gave another tweaking on my mapping and it was agreed that no more mapping was needed until the 3 monthly check up in September. She also tried to help me sort out an issue with the audio leads as I'm experiencing crackling at the jack points of the audio leads when I walk with it. It's fine if it's stationery on a desk.

Saw the speech therapist and gave me more auditory tests, some improvement there but am having some difficulty in some places so another appt is planned for this - next week. Never felt so tired doing so many things in a week.

I'm so used to waking up, go to work, come home, do adhoc things, then bed. It repeats day in and out for a week. That going on holiday throws it off a tangent that it takes a bit of getting used to getting back to normal.

22nd July (Wednesday)

2009-08-04T13:12:00.001+01:00

Back at work today, the sounds are sounding much more natural and are in the right places, for example the keyboard is not so noisy anymore as it seems the brain has registered it as background noise. Colleagues were coming up and asking how the holiday was and to raid the holiday sweet tin, it’s a tradition in the office that the returning holiday maker has to bring in sweets or something edible for the office. The sweet tin is at the corner of my desk and I keep hearing – ‘may I?’ and raiding the tin. I put a notice in the tin – help yourselves, no need to ask but don’t steal the tin!’. So all day I was concentrating in catching up my work, I heard this rustling of the tin and spillage of contents and shuffling back the contents in and the snapping of the lid on.

I was talking to a colleague about the CI and the leads for the music. I realised that in order for my Ipod to be charged up it has to be connected to the mains and this way I cannot listen to music while this was happening without any risk. So I discussed with my colleagues about alternatives and they suggested earphones/ear buds. Got this marked on my shopping list for the weekend. I listened to some music without it connected to the mains. The music does sound different and will have to sort it out in the weekend to keep things simple and to aid me in my re-auditory listening journey.

21st July (Tuesday)

2009-08-04T13:10:00.002+01:00

All the washing’s done. Mother feels a little better as she’s up and about. I’ve managed to stow everything away for another year or so. Was going to download the pictures from the camera into the computer but decided against it as mother and father wants to go out somewhere. So I took them out to shopping and having a cuppa at Borders. The sounds at borders is getting better with this mapping but needs tweaking a little bit here and there. Heard a few books falling off the shelves by accident by a young kid. The staff rushed to collect the books up and the child’s mother was apologising and they replied 'it doesn’t matter and don't worry'. I ordered the drinks and found that the staff did not have any issues with my order; usually I get one or few who doesn’t understand what I was saying. I asked my parents if they have seen any changes the way I spoke, knowing full well that it was only a few weeks since switch on and fully anticipated that the improvements will take time to come in time. They have said that there’s little change in the way I spoke, they said that I was not overemphasising my ‘ths’ so much.

Watched some TV in the evening and was playing with the remote and accidentally switched off the subtitles and I forgot how I switched them on in the first place as I do not have the brand’s remote control as it was broken so I was using the one-in-all remote controls and the subtitles were always permanently on, on the video channel which I use to skip channels without having to come out of subtitles, a bit like American TV’s do. I tried to follow the programmes but found myself lip-reading them quite heavily but I managed to switch the subtitles on. So it will be a while before I can understand them auditorally without lip-reading.

20th July (Monday)

2009-08-04T13:08:00.001+01:00

Washing day today. Mother’s taken a little unwell so I’m looking after her and the washing, what a day. My ears were being bombarded with sounds of the washing machine, tumble dryer. And poor dad was trying to help but I found him being a little a nuisance as he was putting the wrong washing in the machine so I sent him upstairs to sort out the photos as a means of diversion until he was called out to work. He was called out quite early that day so I had all the work without hindrance or anything.

I tended to mother keeping her happy and fed and hydrated. I think the holiday has taken a lot out of her but she says she’s really enjoyed the holiday, we all did. I did some ironing using the new iron with inbuilt steam control thingy. Very good iron I thought, I heard the steam hiss as it came out of the iron and was able to control the amount of steam coming out by fiddling with the controls, the more steam the thicker the hiss is and vice versa. Managed to iron nearly everything that required ironing. Cooked dinner,I only realised that I heard the microwave ping. I did hear it before with the Hearing aids but not with the CI, I wondered when that would come in time and it did today. Result!

19th July (Sunday)

2009-08-04T13:05:00.001+01:00

Again an early start, back on the coach and up the road via Riems. Arrived in Calais early afternoon and managed to catch the early boat back which meant early home time, yay.

Again at the port there weren’t as much traffic apart from the boats approaching and departing the ports. Quiet journey back on the boat except the sea was a little rougher than usual and the boat engines working a little bit harder than usual and the slight roll of the ship reflected that. I also noticed idling while we were waiting for the other ship to come out of port before we could embark.

The journey home on the return bus was a nice experience as the coach was brand new and the sound of the coach engine reflected that. There was an in-coach movie being shown, I couldn’t plug in, as I was not that bothered. Arrived home in good time for me to contact my pet sitter that I could have the boys home earlier than usual. My sister greeted us at the drop off point. She doesn’t sound all that different that I know her for despite having the CI! She also ordered a take away for us, as we were too tired to cook anything.

She came with me to collect the boys. We had a nice little chat in the car, discussing the holiday, weather and news. Nothing has changed much apart from the Swine Flu saga. I found that I could follow her a little bit easier than usual, am unsure about that. Will chat to her again later in the week.

Got the boys back home, boy they looked happy to be back home. The pet sitters have said that they’ve been gold and were a little quiet to start with but came round fairly quickly. They loved my boys and were teasing me that they’d would pet-nap my boys. Crashed out in my own bed.

18th July (Saturday)

2009-08-04T13:02:00.001+01:00

Back on the coach for the long journey to Laon for overnight stay. Went up via Italy through the Frejus tunnel. Quite long and windy. The sounds of the traffic inside the tunnels were magnified a few times. Most of the time there was little traffic.

We arrived into Laon in good time in the afternoon allowing us ample time before supper. Across the hotel there's an active medium sized railway station but could not hear the trains pulling in or away as there's double glazing in the hotel.

No new sounds to sample on this journey apart from some people coughing. There was one bloke that coughed differently from others which made me think that it wasn’t an ordinary cough but an emphysema cough.

17th July (Friday)

2009-08-04T13:00:00.001+01:00

Lie in again this morning, started packing bags as we’re leaving early in the morning. Spent the rest of the day wondering around Menton again and had lunch in town. Retired for a siesta and completed the packing. Went down for supper and then out for the evening to sample the Cuban delights it had to offer. There was Cuban music, dancers, food and wares. I heard the distinctive makuta drums being accompanied by the steelpans. There were some people dressed up in Cuban clothing and dancing around the stalls and the stage. Had some Cuban ice-cream made out of coconut, very nice. Went to bed late.

16th July (Thursday)

2009-08-04T12:58:00.001+01:00

Up early today, got a trip out to St Paul de Vance, again inland from Nice. I now recognised where the noises were coming from in the trees – it’s the cicadas! It was really bugging me all week trying to figure it out what was the sound was. It was really noticeable in Paul de Vance. Paul de Vance is a commune in its own fortressed little town on a hill. It was famous for its orangery but the bottom fell out due to competition so it re-invented itself as a artists colony due to the lighting effects there, much a bit like Cornwall in a way. It wasn’t as narrow as Dolceaqua in terms of the design of the place. It was a bit wider and better-proportioned and no steep hills. The trees were singing with cicadas. Around noon, I heard the bells pealing and reverberating through the commune. Lunchtime I thought, and found a nice little eatery and had some lunch looking out to the French Provencal hillside. I could see the outline of the Nice coast in the distance.

Back to the hotel by 3pm. Again had a rest and had supper. Went out to the beach and noticed that they were setting up some stalls as they were promoting a festival of Cuba. Got that marked in diary for tomorrow.

15th July (wednesday)

2009-08-04T12:52:00.002+01:00

A lie in the morning, a nice break from all those early starts. We were not leaving for another trip till after lunch. It’s Monaco/Monte Carlo day today. After lunch we departed for

Monaco

. Again the guide was telling us about

Monaco

and its history.

As we descended down to

Monaco

, I said that there was a multi purpose stadium (Stade Louis II) built on top of some building as I could see a track and football pitch inside it – what a building feat I thought. The guide also said that there’s a swimming pool underneath the stadium.

As the coach parked inside one of the specially designed parks for coaches, we went up in a lift that was carved into the rock taking us upside. As we came out some impressive buildings met us, one was the sea aquarium and a copy of the yellow submarine that Jacques-Yves Cousteau used for his eco-marine research. We walked up past the cultivated gardens to the church where Rainer and Grace were married in and interred in. We went inside and saw the tombstones of respective rulers and the personal alcove of the current ruler with the AR embroidered to the curtains.

The guide then took us to the main square where the Grimaldi palace was. One thing I noticed about the place that it looked really clean and devoid of rubbish anywhere. It was impeccable. The guide arranged for me to have a text guide to view the Grimaldi palace as it was providing audio guides for the others and to let me bypass the metal detectors. I then proceeded to walk inside the palace and reading the guide. It’s quite small but nonetheless opulent and evident of its wealth. As the hour approached I quickly made my way out of the palace so I could witness the changing of the guard as it happens on the hour of every day. It was quite a simple change over with a few words being exchanged. No stamping of feet unlike our bearskin grenadiers.

Next door there was a museum displaying Napolean memorabilia intermixed with the uniforms of the guards through the days of Monaco. Went back down the way we came via the gardens, I remarked how well kept the gardens were.

Went inside the sea aquarium and was met by several tanks of various sea creatures ranging from the humble Jellyfish to various types of shark. Saw also up close a couple of Nautilus, and some sea horses. There was a huge tank in the middle containing various fishes from the deep to the near surface. Walking around the tanks, heard only the hums of the water filterers and chitter chat by young people there. By then it was nearly time to go on to Monte Carlo to sample the delights of its famous casino and to admire the Hotel de Paris among the well kept gardens and its water fountains.

We also saw some high end cars ranging from the Ferrari to the Maybach. ‘roooaaaar, rooaaar’ of the purring engines being revved up by self deluded posers. Entered inside the famous Monte Carlo Casino, we had to dress up for the occasion as it had some rules regarding entry. Boy the building was absolutely opulent and excesses. The deep pile carpet matched the design of the glass celing of the place. The place had an air of subdued confidence and arrogance. The carpet was so thick that it was silencing our footfall. We could hear the subdued voices of the players and the croupiers on the blackjack, roulette, and keno tables. In another room there was the familiar slot machines and gaming machines. The slot machines were replaced by card/token operated machines, in the past it was operated by ball bearing balls. So I missed the sounds of the ball bearing machines but the ticket machines were quieter. I lost only 4.50 Euros on those machines out of €20. Not bad uh.

We left quite late and the place looked splendour in the night light with the water fountains lit up. The water fountains sounded steady pitterpattering of water like running a tap. It was enough to make one make a beeline for the loo as I noticed it had that effect on some people.

14th July (Tuesday) Bastille Day

2009-08-04T12:49:00.001+01:00

It’s Bastille Day today, a lot of the French places are closed as it’s a national holiday so today we’re venturing over the border to Italy to visit San Remo. Again the same guide accompanied us and told us that she lives in San Remo and proceeded to tell us a bit more about San Remo, that it was famous for their flower cultivation. Flowers supplied to the Vatican, and other important places come from San Remo. All I saw in the hillsides were full of glasshouses on a large scale and large water concrete containers to feed the plants in the glasshouses. The roads were narrow and windy and to the skill of the drivers we managed to get down from the mountains to the bustling port of San Remo. We noticed the language difference and everyone was talking in Italian. I’ve been to Italy in the last few years and I still cannot get over how close the borders were and we noticed some French people there too who travel to San Remo for their shopping wares. It was market day today and it was large. Selling from basic wares to clothing, bags and food. The food hall was a sight to see, full of local produce in their glory and freshness. There were some produce that I could not recognise but didn’t ask. The food hall itself was in a large hall with beams – quite medieval like. One could smell the fish, meat, vegetables, fruit and olive oils. I bought some olives as I like them very much – much an acquired taste that I did not like them until a few years ago. Also they sold Amaretti – my favourite biscuit sweet and bought it by the bag as it was dirt cheap there.

Once finished with the market, we retired to have a drink at the local cafe place. We noticed the buildings were very similar to those in Menton and remembered the history that Menton up to Monaco was once part of Italy that was given to France as repatriation for WWI costs. Italy borrowed money from France for the 1^st WW and couldn’t pay it back so it gave some places away and that’s how Menton came into French hands after WW1. Again the buildings showed Renaissance influences similar to Nice. We walked back to the coach via the palm covered promenade and the old train station near the sea front. It was getting hotter by the minute and we had another place to visit.

Dolceaqua, a few miles inland. A fortified medieval town with a castle at the top, it was protected by a deep river that is now nearly dry due to the climate change. We saw some engineers working in the river and they were cutting some concrete barriers off as it was not needed and it was being redesigned to keep the water locally to keep the local fish population alive. The river was not roaring down the way but quiet rustling of water hitting the boulders/stones in the river. It was only accessible by two bridges, one medieval and one modern. We went over the medieval bridge into the medieval part of Dolceaqua. It’s really narrow and full of alleyways and hotpotch houses all over the place. It does not look out of place from a Harry Potter novel! We visited the old church and sampled its local delicacies and ventured more inside the place. It’s really nice and cool – the builders really knew their stuff in regards the cooling of the place and drainage. We did not have time to go up the castle at the top as the paths leading up to it was quite steep. Everywhere we walked there was no echo just pitter patter of feet on the smoothly polished marble stones on the footpath. Vehicles are banned inside the place as it’s so narrow. I can’t even imagine how horse and cart gets around the place. The people who live there must be very fit from all that walking around at inclines. By then the temperature was already at 36’C.

We returned to the hotel for siesta and to participate with the celebrations. The French do take celebrations quite seriously, everywhere we walked from the hotel to the beach was covered in French flags and a party was set up in the park with local French delicacies and wares on sale. As daylight fell, a noise of anticipation started and we saw local kids going to the beach to set off some really mild fireworks and heard them going off all over the place, there was also some Chinese firecrackers going off too ‘popopopopopoppping’ all over the place. ‘ooohh aahhh’ went up we turned around and saw the main fire display has started. It was a pretty display of fireworks going off in multitude of colours every minute. It lasted for a good ten minutes before it ended. The French were very happy with the display and were celebrating with drinks and singing the Marseille/republican songs.

Retired to bed late, a good day overall, albeit a very hot day.

13th July (Monday)

2009-08-04T12:48:00.001+01:00

First trip of the week – Cannes, Lerin Islands and Nice. We were met by a guide who joined us for the week accompanying us to the trips and dispersing information on the coach. We departed for Cannes, the guide was an ex-pat who lives in Italy with her Italian husband and can speak four languages – English, Italian, French and Spanish. As we approached Cannes to the harbour, one could see the multi-million yachts moored in the harbour and recognised some parts of the Cannes that had made it famous from the Cannes Film Festival. Went up to the pier to join a boat taking us to Lerin Islands. The winds of the boat going across the sea were drowning out any talk that I was trying to and was unable to tell how loud I was talking. Lerin Islands is famous for its historical significance – The man in the Iron Mask was incarcerated there. Now there’s a monastery on the Island giving total solitude from civilisation. One could visit the Islands but it costs money so instead we went around the Islands and saw the castle the Iron man was kept. Also we saw a huge cruise ship moored a few miles offshore, think it was the MSC line – Mediterranean Ship Cruiselines.

Back on dryland, the guide took us around the area made famous by the Cannes film festival and we saw the buildings and the line of film star hands imprinted on the footpath with names such as Quentin Tarantino, Bruce Willis etc. Had lunch in the square – tucking into a lovely rustic ham and cheese baguette. Heard the crunch of the baguette as I munched onto it, didn’t realise it sounded that loud lol. Back on the coach and onwards to Nice. Again in Nice it was also full of old tall Renaissance buildings with similar narrow alleyways. It also has a large square with an electrified tram running across the square. A mixture of old and new. The tram was quiet apart from where the wheels were trundling along the tracks. Wandered around the place again and had a gelatti – pistachio and mango – yum yum, nothing like English ice-cream. This tasted of the real thing. Hmmmm. There was an also antiques market there and lots of French influenced antiques on display along with French chit chat among the buyers and sellers. There was a few differences between ours and the French.

Returned to the hotel quite late and changed for supper. Again we went out for an evening walk along the promenade. I realised that there was something different with the trees during the day and the evening but couldn’t put my finger on it. Will investigate tomorrow.

12th July (Sunday)

2009-08-04T12:47:00.000+01:00

Nice sleep last night. Greeted by the bright morning of the Mediterranean sun streaming into the room. Got dressed for the day, and the temperature is already in the high 20’s. Stepped out onto the balcony and was greeted by the peeling of bells from a half a mile away and the sounds of the sea crashing gently on to the pebbled beach carried over a few blocks to ours (the wind was blowing our way so the sounds were carried over), sporadic traffic going past at a genteel pace and zooming of motorpeds/motorbikes past the hotel down below. Our hotel room was up on the 4^th floor. The number of motorbikes supersedes the cars down here. The roads here are quite narrow and windy. Went down for breakfast and again had the traditional French breakfast, could not find any melba toast. Went out to explore the area.

First went down to the promenade next to the beach and heard the gentle breaking of waves onto the beach, the beach had a mixture of pebbles and sand. It was a nice bright sunny and very warm day already with a hint of humidity and all this at 10am! Walked around the park next to the beach, the old fort and the marina pier. Lots of people bustling around carrying their floaters, bags and chatting a lot. Heard the waterfall of the small ornamental fountain further inland. ‘peal, peal, peal’ of the bells calling mass at 11am. Heard four different sounds of the bells pealing. Each bell had a different sound from high pitched peal to low bass peal. Walked up to the old part of the town – medieval part and it was full of tall buildings and narrow alleyways – wide enough for a horse and cart. We passed some buildings that had fake windows painted on for the sake of geometry. It was nice and cool in the shade. Stone cobbled streets sounds different from concrete paths that one walks on. It was nicely polished by footfall and weather over the centuries. Walked down back to the beach towards the hotel and had to walk across a road where there was a tunnel bored underneath the old town. One could hear the traffic sounds magnified by the tunnel. Returned to the hotel for a rest and to stay out of the hot weather midday. The air con was humming away keeping the room nice and cool. Continued to unpack my things and stowing them way.

Time went quickly and it was time for supper. Went down to the hotel’s restaurant. Lots of hubbub and talking going on, noises of cutlery and footfall permeated the restaurant. The food was very nice – 3 course meal. I think I’ll need to go on a diet if this continues this week lol. Retired to bed early as we had a long journey down here. First trip out tomorrow so a decent start in the morning.

11th July (Saturday)

2009-08-04T12:46:00.000+01:00

Early start this morning, greeted by sounds of holiday makers and French speaking staff and one snoring dog at breakfast time. I had the traditional French breakfast – Croissants and jam. Back on the coach we went, travelled down to Nice via Lyons. Long journey today – no new sounds apart from some people snoring on board! Arrived at Menton around 10.30pm.

One of the hoteliers who greated us said in an heavily accented English that supper is ready and that luggage is to be left in this area etc… tiredly we plodded into the restaurant and had a 3 course supper at 11pm!, checked into our rooms, ahhh bliss – air conditioning and grateful that the air con is not that noisy compared to others that I’ve heard.

Crashed out at midnight. Didn’t bother unpacking the rest of the suitcase, just grabbed the essentials.

10th July (Friday) on Hols!

2009-08-04T12:44:00.001+01:00

Today’s the day.

Caught the coach who’ll be taking us to Dover for our connection to Nice, France. It was Leger coaches and the sounds of this coach compared to the usual commuter coach are quite noticeable. The engine sounds better conditioned and modern. At Dover, the bustling port was made clearer with the sounds of the ferry boats, heavy haulage lorries, coaches, cars, motorbikes and the sirens of opening/closing machinery on the boat with the CI than the HA’s. Sounds from the clanking of the metal plates as the coach travels over it into the belly of the ferry boat, it’s quite metallic sounding intermixed with the ships engines rotating in the water. Made our way up to the shopping/restaurant floor of the boat. I could hear that the sound of the boat is more detailed than previous trips by boat in the past. I’ve travelled on boats at least once a year for shopping and holiday expeditions. This time it was the first time I heard it with the cochlear implant and was surprised at how much of it I recognised and with the additional information provided. Whereas before, I would only hear the revving of the ship’s engines as it motors its way out of the harbour into the channel towards France. This time, I was able to hear the differences in the resting, manuvering and revving state of the ship’s engines. As we approached to the other end of the channel into the French port, we descended down to re-meet our vehicles and our vehicle was right in front of the ship’s bay doors. As soon the flashing lights comes on – came on the alarm sound, I never heard the alarm sounds before with HA’s and watched the bay doors opening up with the high pitched blaring of the alarm.

The French roads are ever so smooth and pothole free, particularly on the toll roads, the engine was constant all the way down to the first overnight stop in Reims. We was met by the hotel proprietor, he spoke good English with a French accent. Was surprised at this, I did not expect his accent was so heavily punctuated when he spoke English that he sounded like one of the actors hamming it on a comedy movie. Had to stifle my laughter and spoke ‘Merci’ – spoken as 'ma si'. I realised that I’d met the proprieter before in previous holiday expeditions and I uncannily remembered how he spoke and this time I was just about able to discern his French accent, whereas previously I couldn’t. My French is not that good apart from the basics. I am able to read French but not in verbal conversations.

The room was clean and acceptable, tired and knackered from the journey, I slept soundly overnight with an early start in the morning.

9th July (Thursday)

2009-08-04T12:42:00.002+01:00

Normal working day today, trying to tie up ends and give handover before I leave for my holidays. No new sounds so far as I'm too busy concentrating on work at the moment.

The boys are transferred to the pet sitter and bade my byes to the boys and returned home to finish off the packing.

8th July (Wednesday)

2009-08-04T12:41:00.000+01:00

Very busy day today and have not bothered with the listening today as I’m terribly up in my eyes in electronic paperwork!

At home, I was cleaning out the boys, the cage was shrieking from being cleaned with the scourer and I heard a bit more of it than the last mapping, it’s more informative and was able to hear the different sounds of the shrieking noise. Gave the boys some nuts and heard them tucking into it, it’s like hearing a typewriter going at different speeds and could tell which one was eating faster and who was taking its time eating it, quite fun to watch and listen to them eating it.

‘knock, knock’ of the door, ‘yes?’ came my reply and I was watching the tv at the same time, came in my mother asking the question ‘have you packed yet?’ without me turning around to lipread her. ‘half done’ was my reply. Silence for a few moments, I turned to mum and asked her a question which she answered and she also said ‘did you realise what you just did there?’, ‘No’ was my reply. She told me what’s transpired then. I said it would be a one off until I’m more confident with the speech comprehension and am still re-learning it; but it was a nice moment for my mother.

Sorry for the Delay

2009-07-27T12:27:00.001+01:00

My apologies if you have been following my blog and found no more entries.

Only just returned from my holidays in France and a week of downtime. Now am back at work and normal routine.

I hope to update this blog fairly soon with more CI moments.

7th July (Tuesday)

2009-07-08T09:47:00.002+01:00

Miserable weather today, intermittent rain. Very busy at work today that I ignored what was going around me as I had deadlines to meet and to tidy up work before I go away on holidays.

On the way home, I managed to get on the coach before the heavens opened, my they did come down like a tour de force, flooded parts of the road. I was hearing the rain hitting the coach quite hard but also heard something else – a sharper thud sounds. Looked up at the sun roof – saw hailstones, in July! Weird weather we’re having at the moment. The roads all the way home looked flooded to a certain extent that the coach on the motorway home had to reduce its speed to ensure we stayed on the road and to be able to see ahead as it was just a sheet of rain coming down so hard that it bounced off the road a bit. At least it eased off enough for me to dash from the bus to my front door.

Opened my suitcase ‘zzziiiiipppp’ of the zippers, noticed that if I speed up the zippers it makes a deeper noise than the usual quiet mid level noise when opening normally. In went the clothes, sundries and all the important sunblock, chargers and my back up hearing aids for my un-implanted ear in case of emergencies. Only two more days to go and then it’s sunny climes. When I was packing my clothes away, I was able to discern the different sounds of the materials – cotton, linen and polyester makes when folding or opening, didn’t realise that the materials sounded differently. The only thing I knew made a difference was those cheap raincoats that squeaks or rustles quite loudly when making movement. Luckily I have a really good quality raincoat and it doesn’t make those sounds and the bonus – it BREATHES!, did you ever worn a raincoat that clung on your skin when you’re hot and was a pain taking it off! Eww

I watched the Michael Jackson memorial service on BBC2, I found that I could follow the male singers better than the females, Mariah Carey has got quite a repertoire and I could not hear some of the notes that she sang but followed the song with captions on. Jermaine really sang the song ‘Smile’ really well and with emotion. Stevie Wonder also sang with emotion that I could hear. It seems that I have my moments where I can hear the high pitched sounds better and vice versa. I think my brain is trying to sort itself out with the mapping of the new sounds.

Roll on Wednesday and Thursday before I can say – ‘Holiday’s here!’

6th July (Monday)

2009-07-07T09:03:00.010+01:00

Heard the rain and the windscreen wipers of the coach going 'thrrrick a thrrrick a' and some squeaks. It's a downright miserable day and humid. On the way in, I was surprised that I could hear the rain hitting stationary cars, buses and pickup trucks with tarpaulin on to the road surfaces and paved stones. At work I heard the rain hitting the glass ceiling and against the windows up on the 9th floor. I'm amazed at the detail of the sounds that rain makes on different surfaces.

I only just realised that I could hear the different engines thrumming as the go past from well tuned to badly tuned to different makes of cars and types of engines - petrol, diesel, hybrid and electric. They sound so different, I know that some cars do not have the conventional piston engine but could hear the difference between the two engines. I told my father that a certain car needs tuning, he was very very surprised that I could hear the difference. car mechanics lessons in the past have paid off *finger licks in the air*.

I watched some TV that evening without the loop. I normally turn up the TV volume up so I could hear it well with the HA but normally gets complaints so it gets turned down which doesn't bode well for me that I had to resort to using the loop hooked up to my mains hi-fi which is hooked up to the TV. Better sound that way. But now having the CI and can't hook my loop up without incurring a lot of interference so I attempted to watch it without the loop and the TV sound on, up went the sound until I was comfortable and noticed that the usual volume is not there, it's a lot lower than the usual TV volume. That's good news!, no complaints so far. It's nice to be able to move around and still hear the TV without having to remove the loop and turning off the Hi-Fi etc. I can just now simply turn the TV on and off, thus saving on carbon emissions. So that's the unexpected bonus side of having the CI lol. Watched some programmes and realised that I was able to follow it easily enough with the captions on. I may try to watch it without the captions when I feel a lot more comfortable with the speech sounds. As I'm finding as time goes on, my ability to understand speech is increased each day in small incremental amounts.

4&5th July (Saturday & Sunday)

2009-07-07T08:40:00.003+01:00

I do really enjoy my lie in's at the weekend, I'm getting too old for this early morning lark but it's the only way I can get to work and leave at decent time. The sounds so far have becoming more clearer and coherent and am finding a lot of gems in listening, particularly with quiet sounds. Normally I wouldn't hear them with the hearing aids. Some has asked if there's any sounds that I consider it to be too loud. I haven't really come across such thing yet but I am aware a lot of the sounds are normal/loud to hearing people, particularly with the flushing of the toilets in public places. They reverberate so much! that surprised me, I used to hear it in the low frequencies with the hearing aids but with the cochlear implant, I was also hearing the higher frequencies and could follow the reverberations around the building walls. I've had to bite my lips to stop myself laughing at the audacity of the sounds, they should design toilets better and minimise the reverberations!

Anyhoo, my day went well, popped down to town again. This time everything was clear not chaotic, I was able to discern the sounds and noted them as certain noises such as chatter, rustling of bags, feet shuffling, dogs panting (I was surprised at this one, think it was a dog trying to keep cool! and heard it a couple of feet away). clanging of till drawers shutting, money being dropped and scooped out of the cash drawers. Squeaking of shopping trollies and the noises as they hit different surfaces. And not at last - screaming children and crying/bawling babies. The screams of children makes me startled and turn around quickly to localise the sounds. Mother was saying that I looked overwhelmed with the noises and that I was responding appropriately to what I was hearing. Not sure if that was a compliment or not?! lol.

Had to get my suitcase out as I'm nearly going away for my hols - going to Nice, France for a week's relaxation and to absorb the sun rays. I suspect the sounds in Nice will be very different to home as it's next to the beach and the french language/accents of the locals. Should be an experience. I'm looking forward to hearing new sounds, particuarly the sounds of the waves hitting the beach or the gentle sea breeze.

I tried the new accessories, the T-auria hook to hook up my CI to a battery music player/ipod etc. I usually use loops but have found them problematic as they create a lot of interference, but with the T-auria hook, it's clear and crisp. I could hear the crackling of the connectors to my Ipod. I can't hook the T-auria to any mains powered appliances otherwise it would fry my processor. So I've emailed Advanced Bionics last week for an adapter which prevents this happening, am yet to hear from them soon.

The sounds coming from my Ipod is very different to what I'm accustomed to and have to keep remembering that I used to wear transposition hearing aids and now I'm hearing things in their proper place. I tried to listen to some music - Holst's the planets/enigma variations, the priests, Celine Dion, movie soundtracks, Rhydian Roberts, Gloria Estefan, Willie Nelson, Ray Charles, Maria Callas, Michael Jackson, Bon Jovi and some Opera. I think I'll have to re-listen to them all as I could not figure some of the music out compared to what I can remember how they sounded like. But it's a positive thing that I can hear it, well some of it, takes getting used to hearing it in the higher frequencies - particularly with Maria Callas!

3rd July (Friday)

2009-07-04T20:14:00.003+01:00

Busy busy at work, trying to get through my pile before the weekend starts. Heard that I got more coming through before I go away for the holidays so I'm trying to get it out of the way as soon as possible.

The implant is working very well and now am finding that the sounds are a lot more richer and varied than it was before. I'm beginning to diseminate the various sounds that I hear around me and categorising them so I don't have to keep thinking - 'what's that sound etc...'. Am so glad the weekend's here - means peace and quiet. At the moment I'm experiencing what's called cocktail sound, meaning that I'm hearing a lot of chatter and noise mingling together and only respond when your name is called. Had that once today but at other times when I'm so absorbed in my work that I forget to respond. Need more practice in this area.

Today I used the 12hr batteries and am finding that they fall short of what they're supposed to last, it lasted 9hrs before I had to change over. Think I'll have to rely on the 24hr ones as they tend to be better for 18hr plus days. My day is very long but have been doing it for donkey years.

Am getting excited to go away for the holidays for a week in sunny climes.

A friend was asking about the cochlear implant, I must retierate that the outcome of cochlear implants vary from person to person as their deaf history is different to others and there's no way of telling if the cochlear implant will work for them. I just happen to be lucky, even though I did find at first in the first two weeks being very very unsure if the implant was working but it turned out it was working but I was hearing a very restricted sound width which more than frustrated me but didn't show it as I knew that they would be switching it on in the following week. And with the latest mapping, the results gets better every time. I have another mapping scheduled before I go away. Not quite sure what they want to do this time except I may ask them to increase the sound at the extreme ends of the sound scale - low and high frequency. I'm still relearning as I go along and each time it gets better and better. Soon I will not have anything to report.

2nd July (Thursday)

2009-07-03T13:28:00.002+01:00

On went the processor to my ear, fiddle fiddle of the magnet, ‘clunk and a whoosh’ *ah* sound came through and I’m sorted for today. Can hear myself going about for the day, ‘foot pattering about on the wood floor, tidying up of items and seeing to the rats. To the crunch of the front door closing and my feet hitting the concrete, the tarmac, grass and back on the tarmac at the bus stop’. Foot sounds different on ground surfaces and it sound’s much better than the last mapping. Heard the everyday air gently whooshing about and just about hear the birds – particularly the doves/pigeons. They have a distinct sound of ‘cuooocucooo’ and ‘coocooosrctsrct’ just missing out the higher notes. Need to mention this to the audiologist on this issue of high notes.

Came off the bus at London, again the traffic is blunted out again; think it’s the processor speed. With my hearing aids, the processor speed is quite high (I think).

Work sounds more normal now, even the keyboard is registering different details of sound, depends where you’re hitting the keys, i.e. less used keys sounds a bit stiffer than the most used keys which tends to sound a bit smoother. Environmental sounds are now more recognisable.

In the afternoon, I could tell when the office was quiet or busy by the general hubbub that goes on in the office, and there was a glitch in the software in the computer which was causing collective groans across the office and the level of hubbub increased a bit. I was not affected so I continued working *drat*, kept getting disturbed by my colleague behind me who was cataloguing product items for photography shooting and she was dropping shoes on the floor. I’ve learned to ignore it unless it’s accompanied by screaming or not and crashing/loud thuds. Heard some spontaneous sporadic laughter going on in the office in different parts of the office.

At home, I’m finding that I’m hearing more detail than before with various tasks or sounds. Now I’m finding that I can re-enjoy the TV once more as I can now hear voices and background noises of various programmes. But I still have the captions on to help things along a bit. Noticed when I’m watching the news, I can nearly am able to discern what the newscaster was trying to say without the subtitles with the aid of lip-reading and auditory listening. I will continue with this as it’ll help with the sound recognition without the subtitles. Music appreciation is still not quite there yet.

1st July (Wednesday)

2009-07-03T12:51:00.007+01:00

Recognition of sounds continues today from home to the bus stop and on the coach to London. But when I hit the streets of London the traffic was indiscernible/couldn’t hear it and there was an ambulance with sirens on weaving through the traffic with sirens on. I could not hear the sirens but could see other people turn around to locate where the sirens were coming from (that concerned me a bit – sirens and sound of traffic).

The background noise in the office is OK this morning before everyone else turns up for work at 9. I can hear the wheel of the mouse moving and the clicks. When it gets noisier, the sound of the mouse is drowned out as it should be. Keyboard is back to normal levels of sound as before.

I heard my colleague call out my name after the third try, I wasn’t sure if he was calling my name but I turned my head around to see what’s the fuss is about. I didn’t register that at the moment, it only came to me afterwards and asked my colleague to confirm that he did call my name out and that I responded which was confirmed. His voice is in the middle not as deep as other guys. I think I’m starting to hear my own voice… before I couldn’t, it sounds different and think it may change for the better as I get accustomed to it. ‘Is this really happening’ thinking at the moment. My other colleague’s voice is a little bit deeper and still having issues plus he’s softly spoken (!).

Rang the speaking clock on my mobile phone to get the time and to see if I can hear the time being spoken, in a busy office – not able to do this. It was time for me to go to my third mapping appt, so I hopped on the local bus going my way across London. On the way across, I’d remembered that at each stop the the bus makes an announcement for the blind stating where it has stopped, and upon the closure of the doors it says what number the bus is and the final destination. I knew that the sound it makes were in the lower frequency and I only just able to make it out. This was backed up by another demonstration that I caught an eye of. In a square near a mainline station, there was a demonstration by a Taiko drummer and a flutist. Geez the drummer ever looks so red and sweaty in the summer sun drumming away on a huge drum that dwarfed his small size, I realised that I could only hear bits of it and could not hear the flutist from where I was sitting on the bus. This confirmed that I am missing out on the low and high frequency sounds.

At the hospital I mentioned the issues and they were resolved by tweaking the mapping, had some hearing and auditory tests which was performed well. This is my new hearing audiogram with the CI being tested for the first time in tested auditory environment. As you can see there's quite a marked difference! I did not even believe the audiologist when she said that's really really good for a first time and will only get better... (click on image to see it enlarged)

A speech banana audiogram - it shows everyday environmental and speech sounds have their place across the sound spectrum.

On the way out of the hospital, I was greeted by the noise of the traffic and noticed that I could hear them come and go – Whoohoo! While I was waiting for my coach. As I stood longer waiting for the coach amongst the traffic, the CI became 'bland' at the processing of traffic sound and was finding that I could not distinguish the sounds of traffic going by.

But had a moment where I heard a high pitched sound and turned to locate it – it was a police car coming up the road and turning right using a mixture of sirens and white noise. That’s a tick in the listening list I thought.

As time went on, the sounds were fast becoming familiar once again and were beginning to notice the tiniest detail; I was feeding my rats some sunflower seeds and pine nuts in the peace and quiet. I could hear the pine nut hitting the wood floor. I’d never hear this before only with larger items.

Brrrbrrrbrrrtoutout…. brrrbrrrbrrrtoutout’ caught my attention and realised it was my mobile phone saying that I have a text message. On replying to the text, I could hear the noise of the keys as I tapped in the message. ‘Neat’ I thought to myself on hearing the keys.

Settled down to watch some TV, hmm itchy earlobe, up went my hand and stritched it and stopped and restarted, hey I can hear it and my hair too! so much detail and that I could hear it. As it was a hot evening and the duvet would not help matters so off it went and heard it 'flump' onto my wood floor and whoosh of a cotton sheet as a replacement and then opened my windows wide to let the cool air in *whaa?* in surprise - I can hear the ruddy motorway - a mile and half away! The wind was carrying the noise over to the house. Wow I thought and settled down for the night.

30th June (Tuesday)

2009-07-01T08:03:00.002+01:00

Had a team meeting in the staff canteen this morning, found it quite difficult to follow the speaker discussing business status and priorities over the echo of the canteen with the crockery, cutlery and voices. I heard the cutlery very clearly as opposed to the crockery (?!). I had to ask him again after the meeting at my desk. I explained that I’m still having issues with speech over background noise; he was very helpful and emailed me his notes from the meeting which helped me to manage my team for the week ahead.

After lunch I noted that the difference in the sounds of the office becomes more recognisable in the afternoon as opposed in the mornings… Also I turned the volume up back to what it was – at noon. I clearly heard someone drop a box full of products for photographing two desks away, it startled me a bit and gave her the looks, she said – ‘you heard that? Sweet!’ - am a bit unsure if I heard it or it was such a bang that I felt it.

Had a departmental meeting with the whole of E-Com, the room we were in had bad air conditioning but it’s nice and cold. I just about made what the speaker was talking about – sales figures etc…

Went back to my desk and resumed working, I noticed that I was able to locate the sound I was hearing in different directions and there was a colleague behind me typing quite hard and I heard her when I located the sound where it was coming from. The office by then was a lot quieter than the general melee of sounds as half of the workers were at another building.

At home, the house was nice and quiet and remarked how many things I'm recognising already but did find some holes that I could not hear, the doorbell for example!. Heard the tv for the first time but without the low sounds. Watched a rental film - 'Bolt'. Very sweet story and funny in bits. Can't believe how animations have come so far along since it's infancy. The nose of bolt looks so realistic like a proper dogs nose - wet & shiny!

Got my third mapping tomorrow. Will mention the issues and hope for the best.

29th June (Monday)

2009-06-29T19:43:00.003+01:00

Travelling down on the coach to work, I definitely noted that the low sounds are missing so I have noted this for the audiologist.

At work the chaotic noises has also given away to recognition of some sounds, but not all. I could hear voices behind me of my colleagues talking and the pitter patter of the keyboards. But speech comprehension is still low but can hear them, male voices are problematic at the moment, probably due to the lack of low notes I'm hearing at the moment. So a really positive day at work - sound wise.

Walking the way home to the bus stop in London, I could hear the gust of wind coming over the bridge from the Grand Union Canal.

27th/28th June (Saturday & Sunday)

2009-06-29T19:29:00.002+01:00

Saturday
The town noises still eludes me, still hearing it as chaotic but not as bad it was with the first mapping. Bravely ventured into M&S and sure enough it's quite noisy with the chatter, footfall and the noises of the rails. Realised that I could hear the swishing of the clothes on the rail. A wow moment there.

At home, I continued to re-acquaint myself with household items and noises. Speech is still elusive but was able to tell a difference in male and female voices. Also heard the humming of my PC, as I upgraded the graphics card which required more power - hence a noisier cooling fan. Can hear the clicking of the mice and its movement around on the table.

Recognition of items is now coming through thick and fast that I gave up writing it in my journal!

Sunday
Oh boy boy, we had thunder and lightning all way through yesterday evening into the night. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard the crack of the lightning but could not hear the peal/rumble of the thunder, instead I felt the rumble. Which led me to wonder if the low notes are too quiet for me to hear. Must tell the audiologist this.

Today the weather's dry and sunny and quite unbearable! The temperature's rising to 28'C (82.4F). The Met office says we're in for a heatwave coming this week - hitting 32'C max (89.6F). Popped down to Borders and Boots for some retail therapy (well I'm only a woman!). Noted that the chaotic noises has ceased, it's given away to recognition of some sounds in the building. Could hear the air conditioning humming throughout the building in Borders and the flicking of pages, dropping of books onto tables, books being put back on the shelves. All these sounds I took for granted before is now in an explosion of colour to put mildly. Beforehand there were certain sounds omitted is now there. I still have the issue with the low notes but it's way better than it was before.

I hope the next mapping continue to improve things.

26th June (Friday)

2009-06-29T19:23:00.002+01:00

The new mapping continues to befuddle my brain like the switch on in the morning, everything at work is chaotic and indiscernible for a while. The keyboard is brought to the fore once again but the sound is more informative than the last mapping. One thing I noticed is that I could not hear my own voice for some reason. As the day progressed I noticed that I was starting to recognise some things but not 100% sure. I'm continually to be amazed at how adaptative the brain is. It's sure working overtime and yet I do not feel tired or shattered from a hard day's listening.

As I was going through the homework and ticking off the sounds that I detected and recognised, and I noted that my recognition rate is starting to improve. I'll have more sounds to learn over the weekend with this new mapping.

25th June 2009

2009-06-26T08:40:00.006+01:00

Looking at my hearing journal and noticed that I've not entered much information in the last two days in regarding detecting environmental sounds and speech. I realised that I've had a limited mapping for the past few days since switch on and my brain was hungry for more information. Was glad that I have another mapping session today at the hospital. It's quite hot/warm outside today (24-26C) with sporadic light showers.

At the hospital today for my second mapping, the audiologist and she asked a few questions about the last few days. I replied saying that the initial 3 days were chaotic and was feeling a lot of sensations and in the last few days, it settled down and not so much sensations and sound was coming through albeit limited sound. And was having issues with the magnet - it kept falling off. The Audi said that she'd replace the magnet with a stronger one and brought one back, it's ugly, more pronounced looking thing than the one I was supplied with, it stuck on my head like an eyesore!. But it did stick and stay on.

Audi hooked up my processor to the machine and started mapping and switching on all the rest of the electrodes. Thought I'd never feel that my brain's ever so happy with all this new information coming and was working overtime again. Typical of my brain - it loves sound. And here was I concentrating double hard trying to make sense of what I was hearing, was pleased to hear that the sounds I was hearing was a lot more fuller/rounder than it was previously. She says next mapping she will make it more fuller and richer sound for me which should help, I'm looking forward to that already.

To help me adjust to the new mapping, she said just chat and see how I go so we started chatting about things and she said that there was another CI user - a profoundly deaf one around my age who was also born deaf like me had a harder time earlier this morning as they had their switch on. The CI user's expectation was too high and misguided, cried and thought that the CI would make everything perfect and 100% hearing, straight off. The Audi had to explain everything and bringing their expectations lower. So she had a mare of a morning which I can only sympathize. One must really remember that the CI is totally different ball compared to Hearing Aids and the way sounds work is different too and will take time to perfect the 'art' of listening and recognizing sounds. Which is why I went through the CI process with an open mind and anticipated some hard work ahead, keeping my expectations low and hopes high. After a while I felt the initial switch ons have now settled down and familiar sounds were returning which is GOOD sign. My time was up and was due to meet the speech therapist. Had time to grab some lunch.

Met the speech therapist and discussed my week and what I heard etc.. told her that the mapping is limited and couldn't do much but it helped my brain to recognise that there's a different stimuli to work with and with the second mapping, my brain is happier already. 'That's good' she says and we did some comprehension tests with syllables. Had a CI moment in the office during the tests - heard her ripping the paper off her clipboard and turning it over without looking and the scrreeeh of the pen underlining the heading on the paper! - *mental note - must write this CI moment in hearing journal!*

Did very well on those and gave me some homework which was to re-acquaint myself with familiar sounds so I can recognise them later on and keep up with the hearing journal. It was a tiring afternoon and made my way back to work till it was hometime again.

At home the familiar sounds I hear is a lot much better, more fuller and rounder but not quite there. Good enough I thought and remembered next weeks mapping will hopefully improve things further. Had another CI moment, I had my back against the critter's cage and heard this sound, I heard it before but it was not complete and this time it was - buhbuhbuh, it was one of them drinking out of the ball bearing water bottle! That brought a smile to my face realising that I recognised that sound without having to look to see where it came from!

So a really good productive albiet a tiring day. Must write up my hearing journal now.

24th June 2009

2009-06-24T13:35:00.002+01:00

Nothing new to report today, still got that 'bee in my bonnet' going on. The keyboard is unnoticeable now. Still dithering as to whether I'm hearing sounds or not cos it's sooo quiet at the moment, no booming sensations anymore. It's as if they're dampened down.

Am looking forward to tomorrow's 2nd mapping session and what a marathon session it is, over 3hrs of tuning. No doubt I'll be exhausted afterwards. Hope it'll open up the frequencies and let my brain knuckle down to figure it all out.

Urrghh - damn, my un-operated ear earmould got chewn up by my critters! - emailed the audiologist and she'll make a new impression tomorrow. It's my fault for leaving it so close to the cage, luckily the mould was not attached to my Hearing aid. I dread to think how they'd make of it, covering it in little chew marks or what. My cochlear implant equipment is far away and out of their reach like it's too precious!. Whenever I bring anything new - they like to have a sniff, bite or nibble on it. They never learn eh?.. lol.

Roll on tomorrow and the lovely weather we're having at the moment, lovely balmy sunny 24C (75.2F).

Monday & Tuesday (22nd & 23rd June 2009)

2009-06-23T08:44:00.006+01:00

It's not so noisy but I seem to have a bee in my bonnet when I'm in the office, thinks it could be the humming of the PC machines and the air conditioning. Am trying to tune it out with minimal success. The keyboard is not so noisy anymore as it seems to have faded into background noise so a success there. Also noticed that the sound of water is distinctive but missing some information to complete the picture. Also I can hear voices but cannot make it out. Hopefully the next mapping coming up this Thursday should see more electrodes switched on and more sound coming through. The journey on the coach is changing too - I'm not hearing every bump and grinding of the wheels, it's getting better. I seriously doubt it will be like this as with each mapping - it brings background noises to the fore once again - maybe not. I'll have to wait and see.

No new sounds just yet, due to my limited mapping but am pleased that the brain is adapting very well and is doing the right things. But wish it could tune out the humming though.

I have to say that the sounds I'm currently experiencing is totally different to what I'm used to, it's hard to explain but hopefully when more electrodes are switched on - I'll have a better idea.

Got some good news from the vets, the medication's working and has halved his glucose levels. Will continue him on this treatment for now, he's quite grumpy that he can't have any yoggie drops as much he likes, he's been rationed to have one yoggie drop a week whereas previously he would get one when he did something I trained him to do. He was quite bemused to be offered primula as an alternative treat but nonetheless gobbled it down double fast to prevent his brothers from barging in to get some too. I think the boys like their primula more than yoggie drops but they're not that patient that I have to keep them separate until it's their turn to have some. Right now I can't hear them but can read their body language and remarked how much observation I was using over my hearing with my pets that it's not that a big deal to hear them but nice to be able though.

Father's Day (21st June 2009)

2009-06-21T19:22:00.004+01:00

Had a nice lie in today, needed it so much as I found the day before so tiring and had to take some painkillers for the headache. I was out in town sorting out my sunglasses for the holiday as I wear prescription glasses and contacts but I'm currently experiencing issues with the contacts and felt it would be safer to get some prescription sunglasses made up and it was at half price so no brainer there. I need my eyes to be ok as I'm totally deaf at the moment and relearning the sounds at the moment.

Woke up and went over to say Happy Father's day and gave his present - a made to size order of a men's shirt. Well made I thought when he put it on, the colour suits him well. Lovely day too, and I'm finding that the CI is beginning to settle down as it's a lot quieter at home so not so much information coming in, think the brain's grateful for it. The keyboard is not so noisy at the moment - well a bit. Dread what the noise is going to be at work tomorrow.

So far at home - I heard the water running and draining away, patter of feet, noise from the tv but undiscernable, paper rustling and loud breathing. Still can't understand speech due to the limited sound range I have got switched on at the moment. So hopefully come Thursday, couple more electrodes switched on - a bit more sound information coming in for my brain to digest. One side effect I noted is that when i wear it - it's fine but when it's off - I get a mild spinning sensation a bit when you spin around too fast and the balance organ thinks you're still spinning when you're not, I had to counteract it by spinning the wrong way and it settles down. Very strange - must mention it to the audi.

Overall a nice quiet pleasant day with family and lipreading is coming to the fore at the moment with the CI. Had to ask mother to cut some hair off around the area of where the magnet sits, as it keeps falling off too easily. Funny that I and mum knows that I have a small shaved area in the midst of my long flowing locks! - the hairdresser will get a surprise when I tell her lol.

2nd & 3rd day post activation (19th & 20th June 2009)

2009-06-20T13:53:00.005+01:00

Well, it's certainly tiring for the brain to filter the sensations out. I'm finding it a little difficult to recognise the sensations but I know it's there. So far, I can and make the link of the sensations coming from the keyboard at work and home. It's so loud that it's right in front of there rather than being a background noise. Travelling home on the bus I could 'feel' the wheels hitting every pothole, dip in the road and my CI responded that by sending louder sensations - Ugh! - not nice. Can feel talking, water running, walking of feet, things being moved around, even the packaging rustling from a box of vegetables. So many noises around and feeling them at the same time. I only took off my CI once for 10 minutes as it started to give me a headache which I took some painkillers for. The painkillers helped a lot.

Still having an issue with the magnet, might resort to create a little hairless area so the magnet will stay on properly. Did not see father for a day or two and he was most interested in the cochlear implant and I showed him the kit that comes with the CI - dry kit, batteries, recharger, accent caps, spare parts and the users manual. He was asking a few questions about what was I hearing. I found it difficult to describe and could not think of a suitable analogy to describe it. That will prey on my mind for a few days until an eureka moment comes!

Just learned that one of my pets has diabetes, so countless trips to the vets is organised. He's ever so good at taking the insulin medication. I hope it'll improve his life a bit, good thing I noticed that he was drinking a lot and weeing copiously which warned me that he could be diabetic or a kidney infection. Mind you I hoped for the latter as it's easier to treat but unfortunately not the case. At least he's on tablets for now, until the dreaded day that the vet says that the tablets aren't working and resorting to give insulin injections. I don't mind injecting but it's a right bugger to keep them still while administering it!

1st day post activation (18th June 2009)

2009-06-19T09:32:00.004+01:00

Walking out of the hospital with mother. And having only three electrodes switched on. It really felt weird hearing limited sensations and no sound in the midst of noise of the traffic on the road. I could tell that my brain is working very hard to make head & tails of the new sounds. We proceeded to find the Marks and Spencer flagship store - Marble Arch by hopping on the local bus up to Oxford Street. Over 4 floors of luscious goodies - mother's heaven! and I was walking behind her noting every sensation that I was looking at. I knew that I would not hear any sounds just yet, but felt a little disappointed but did not take it to heart, instead went with the flow. Mother said that I looked tired, I did feel tired as my auditory brain was overclocking at the moment.

The magnet kept dropping out of place and I realised that I noticed it straight away - so that says something uh!, the audiologist replaced it with a stronger one at the switch on, but I think it's my hair is interfering with it. Might have a little think about that one. AB does not do that many different strengths of magnets as Cochlear does. AB only do half strength and one ?!?!, whereas cochlear has strength 1,2, 3, 4, 5 and super strength. The supers strength has to be on special order. I think the AB strength 1 is ok for now providing I don't play with my hair.

By the time we got home, I really felt that tired and had supper and retired to bed early. I hope that when I return to work and feel not too tired when I go home. It'll be like this for the next couple of weeks before things settle down.

I've started a hearing journal to mark things down, i.e - heard that sound but do not recognise it just yet etc... just to help me with the mapping and speech therapy sessions at the hospital.

I'm switched on! (18th June 2009)

2009-06-18T19:27:00.007+01:00

It's official, I'm now switched on and what a strange sensation!, at the moment I'm feeling the sounds but not hearing them just yet. I think my brain is on high gear trying to make sense of the sounds. There was a peculiar moment where the audiologist was talking to me and then mum spoke off my side and I turned around and said 'lunch?' - what mum actually said - 'what are we having for lunch?' just to test me. I wasn't sure if I actually heard it cos I was really confused as to what I was hearing and why I said lunch as I do not recall having prior information to saying lunch?! My brain must have been pre-empted me to say lunch because it heard something. My brain is in a constant state of flux over the sounds or sensations. At the moment it's like having hyperacusis - not pleasant at all.

The audi says that they're taking the electrode switching on very slowly because of my hearing history and have no auditory memory since birth. So literally I'm relearning the sounds all over again. With the Harmony - there's 16 electrodes, and today only three were switched on just to ease me in which I'm grateful for. The next mapping will be next week on Thursday where they'll ramp it up a gear by switching on more electrodes.

At the fitting of the processor, it was found that the standard magnet was too weak and had to change the magnet for a stronger one. Might think of shaving the area so it sticks on better. I've had the magnet falling off a couple of times today. Must play with the placement of the magnet to get used to it and the processor. I've set the battery charger up and plopped in the rechargeable batteries to recharge overnight ready for the morning. New routines to learn and I have 'homework' set by the speech therapist to help me to make sense of what I'm hearing at the moment.

Coming home from the hospital in London, I realised that I could not 'hear' the traffic as I realise that there's only 3 electrodes are switched on - the rest will come in due course *slaps head*. But I can 'hear' myself typing on the computer... So in all - a very positive experience and nonetheless quite exciting start to hearing sound again.

I'm tired now and will have an early night tonight.

4 weeks gone already...

2009-06-15T09:17:00.003+01:00

Time flies by so quickly that it's nearly time for activation.

At the weekend I met other CI recipients, candidates and staff of the hospital at a BBQ held in the hospital grounds. The weather was lovely and at 26c degrees. Met new people there and hearing their stories of their CI progress. Every single one I heard was different from the other which made it very interesting.

It was intriguing to hear from the CI surgeon that the policy of opening up the head to prep for the CI has changed, five years ago one would have had a 4 inch shaved area and an inverted L shape cut in the head. The reason they changed to behind the ear was that they found from studies that the women were quite traumatised from the 4" shaved area so they changed the site of incision to behind the ear. Which I was pleased to hear about. My scar's healing up very well and no pain at all.

Speaking to other CI recipents, they've said how great their CI is and how much it's changed their lives and were talking about the future of the CI's as a couple of them went to an open day where the representatives of the CI brands were there and spoke of future developments of the CI's which was very interesting/promising to watch. I'm sure I will be watching this progress very closely.

I gave an open invitation to close family that they can come and watch the switch on, mother's coming. Others are working so is unable to come. Mother's quietly excited about it as I've been keeping them up to date with my CI progress ever since I said that day that I was going to request for a CI implant. That was July last year and the progress started in early October 2008.

It's my birthday on the 16th so I'll be opening my pressies after work as I leave early for work, plus preparing for the switch on in 2 days time.

Also I'm thinking of changing my blog title and looking at alternatives to mark this new chapter of my life with an activated CI implant.

Neat uh?!

2009-06-07T20:53:00.003+01:00

Managed to get some pics taken of my scar, I couldn't believe how well it healed, the superglue has done its job very well. The scar is tucked away in the crease of my ear. In a couple of months later - it will be un-noticeable. All that's left to do now is to wait for activation day on the 18th. And will be back at work after two weeks sick leave.

Got a date for activation!

2009-06-06T13:05:00.003+01:00

Another letter came in the post after a few days after my check up letter. I got my activation date - 18th June 2009. Two days after my birthday - who'd ask for a better present than that. Am looking forward to it and also a little bit anxious as to what I'll experience on the actual switch on. I've got a little notebook ready to note the new sounds and of any other notes that requires a little bit more mappings. The letter also shows the dates of my other mapping dates - five of them!.

Rang the hospital to cancel and re-book one of the mapping sessions as I'll be away sunning myself on the Mediterranean. I couldn't have chosen a worse time to go as it'll be very hot and sunny. I hate the heat lol, bought plenty of sunblock and after-sun lotion so I can keep the tan on as long I can.

I have to keep kicking myself that it is really happening and so soon, thought I'd have to wait for 5/6 weeks till activation but no - just 4 weeks. Had the op on the 21st May, activation on the 18th June - almost a month! I have read somewhere that some CI recipients have had theirs activated 2/3 days after the op. I suppose it's all based on a variety of factors, i.e. doctor, implant centre, CI policy etc... To tell you the truth I've not had that much swelling after the operation. If I were to have a second CI implant, I think they would activate it much sooner but that's dependant on the CI centre and their CI policy.

A-OK!

2009-06-06T12:55:00.005+01:00

The post op check up went as smoothly as I thought it would. The doctor's very pleased with the outcome of the scar - it's nearly non-existent and tucked away in the crease of my ear. Must get it photo'ed and uploaded here soon - so watch out for that one. The steristrips came off very easily and no pain. It now needs cleaning as it's quite sticky - I'll get my mother to do that for me as she's an ex-nurse and is good with it. I managed to ask the doc for a copy of my x-ray showing the cochlear implant in situ. It looks very different to what i'd imagine my skull to be lol. One can just able to make out the implant. Sorry for the contrast differentiation. Will ask my father to play around with it as he's a radiographer. Nice to be able to have medical parents to help me out.

Click on picture to view it bigger size.

Am cleared to go back to work on Monday. At last - I was going a bit nuts at home doing nothing. Already did what I wanted to do ages ago. Got a new project to keep me occupied - genealogy (re-picked it up after 10 years ago) and self improvement on photoshop editing!

In fact after the seeing the doc, I went straight over to the British Library to renew my reader's pass and went straight up to the ecclesiastical records and spent the afternoon there researching - that's how bored I was lol.

Ahh Bliss....

2009-05-29T20:55:00.003+01:00

The dizziness is all gone. Took 7/8 days to get over it - interesting. Some people take longer or shorter to get over whatever symptoms they have. At least the experience is now dealt with and forgotten for now.

Lovely day today - spent it in the garden under the parasol reading a book. Got to pop down to town to meet a friend as I've not seen her for a while and to say hello to her young son - 7mths old. Babies make me a bit broody sometimes and this young man is no exception. He smiles/responds when 'cooed' to. He's reduced me to talking baby talk and he laughs heartly which is soo cute to see. He looks so much more like his father each time I see him. His mum and I nattered for a while loosing track of time. Couldn't belive how time flies when having fun and nattering away.

She's very impressed at how the operation's gone well and is interested to see how I cope with the switch on and how I'll sound. Hands up at this point as I do not know how I'll respond but did warn her that I'm keeping my expectations low and hopes high, so that way I can deal with any shortcomings more sensibly without setting myself for a long fall which is more common sense that way. It would be nice to have high expectations but I would be very silly if I did that and would be very heartbroken so I've done the opposite but with fingers crossed.

Am looking forward to the weekend of lovely weather. Not much on the telly tonight so I'll be having an early night.

Fresh Air

2009-05-28T15:20:00.002+01:00

Am glad to get out for some fresh air. Wanted to do some retail therapy so braved the drive down to our major M&S store at out of town retail park. Noticed that the dizziness is almost non-existent. Whoohoo. Am glad to see the end of that - not a pleasant journey with the dizziness.

It was nice and quiet and uncrowded at the store, managed to buy some summer clothes for the impending holidays in July. I expected to see children on half term running round, screaming or mucking the clothes around, but no. It was a nice easy shop until the tills!. Got a major shock, went over my budget by 50%. Ah never mind - bought it all anyway. Treated mum and I to a cuppa at Starbucks. Nice drinks and decided we'd better get back home. The sun's out and shining and pleasant. Got in the car and exclaimed that we'd spent over 2hrs shopping! lol, it only felt like an hour.

Got home, had some lunch. Watched a bit of telly. Then I did a massive spring clean of my clothes to make way for my new clothes. I have too many clothes, either that or I need a new bigger wardrobe *sighs* . It was a good spring clean out. Gave the clothes away at a charity skip.

Think I'll venture out to town tomorrow as I think the dizziness will be gone by then. Am glad that the scar's healing very well and not much swelling but still unable to sleep on that side. Got a letter from the hospital for a check up next week so a trip to London is on the cards. Hope the weather is OK on that day not unbearable like a mini heatwave. I hear we're in for a scorching summer! nice... Not that I'm a fan of the unbearable heat that normally accompanies the sun. Have stocked up on the sunblock in preparedness. Roll on summer!

Hhhmmm...

2009-05-27T18:40:00.003+01:00

The recovery is going well as can expected. Still experiencing some issues with balance but that's going away gradually. Still bummed out with the lack of taste. My brain was cruel to me earlier today thinking of yummy foods and indian sweets. *Ggggrrhh* I made a mental note to myself that if all, I mean all my tastebuds come back - I'm going to treat myself to a ladoo (sweet dumplings) or two!

I'm unable to potter around as usual so I'm getting square eyed with the TV and the computer. A TV marathon of watching all the episodes of Friends with a bowl of grapes from last week and a jug of water is currently underway. No point in flavouring my water with squash with lack of taste. Hmph. If I manage to get through this box of Friends, I have got Supernatural, X-files lined up next.

Am going to try and move around a bit more in the next few days to give my brain a chance to re-acquaint itself with the utricle, Saccule, ampulas, and the vestibular canals - namely called the balance organs. *Touches wood* that I've not had any nauseous episodes or imbalance episodes.

Bummer!

2009-05-23T15:20:00.002+01:00

I was looking forward to having my french salad meal with the food bought in France on the other day. I found that my taste buds have been affected by the operation. I was warned that I may loose the taste sensation temporarily and will return in a few months. I thought it would be a small area of my tongue but found it covered nearly two thirds of my tongue. So no naughty pleasures of chocolate or Haagen Daz ice cream for a while. I'll have to wait patiently for it to come back but discovered that spicy foods is tasted more than usual.

No pain so far from the operated area which is good news. Slight dizziness which is to be expected as the vestibular balance is affected by the threading of the electrode into the cochlear. Unavoidable but not as bad as I thought it would be.

Had a really good night's sleep lately, thought i'd have to prop myself up on pillows like a recliner but discovered that I could resume my normal sleeping posture and learned not to sleep on the operated side for a bit.

The ear itself seems to be doing ok, not as much swelling which is good news, the site is clean and tidy and managed to keep it dry so far.

Back Home!

2009-05-22T13:36:00.004+01:00

Am back home and safe. The operation went very well but had to stay overnight to due to anaesthetic issues - made me feel very groggy. It's always has done with every op I had to date. Am feeling better now and not in much pain. They've given me some painkillers to take at home.

At the hospital yesterday, there was a little bit of cock up when I was called to the theatre that I was not the one they wanted so my palpitations went up and down twice. I was called again a hour later and I was the right one and before I knew it I was gone. Came round OK but very groggily. Slept most of it off and still wasn't up to eat anything despite being nil by mouth for a good day or so. Around at 10pm at night I finally started to come round proper and my appetite returned so had some yogurt as i couldn't fancy any solid food for a bit. Discovered my taste has been affected by the op. around a third of my tongue cannot taste but was told that it would return in a few months to a year. That's a relief. It's like having half of your tongue anaesthetised at the dentist when one has work done on one side of the mouth, a bit like that but without the numbness.

Slept a bit more and come 6am in the morning, felt alot more lucid and with it - thank god, I wasn't sure when it would arrive as I wanted to come home into my own bed as one does when being in hospital. The nursing staff has been fantastic and very nice. The ward was quiet at night with a couple of emergency admissions. Had some more yogurt and toast. Got dressed and was portered down to X-ray to check that all's OK. Saw the X-ray - quite neat to see, shame I couldn't ask for a copy. But I have other channels that I can try to obtain a copy of it later. I had to take the left arm of my glasses off as it was hurting my operated side a bit. Much better now.

My parents were waiting for me when I returned from X-ray to take me home. Not bad journey home, slept a bit. Had some toast for lunch and rested for the afternoon. Parents were commenting how neat and clean the scar site is. Now all I have to hope now is that there's no swelling or pain, then I'll be good as gold.

See pics of before and after.

The left hearing aid is now retired permanently.

D-Day to op

2009-05-19T20:26:00.003+01:00

This will be my last post till post operation. As I will be spending the day out in Belgium. I hope the operation goes well and not too much nausea. I hope to have some visual record of this phase so I'll see if I can get some willing snappers to take pics. See you all after the op.

D-Day 2

2009-05-19T08:10:00.009+01:00

*YEAH Woohoo* jubilant shouting. I got me suitcase open! The suitcase people got back to me with instructions which took me a bit of time but managed to do it in the end, with a pair of sore thumbs from twiddling the number dials. Retrieved my overnight bag out of it and got the bag ready for Thursday.

Received some good luck from friends and relatives, which is nice of them. Can't postpone the inevitable but am looking forward to Wednesday's trip to Belgium. Printed out some maps of Leper (Ypres) as I wanted to see the WW1 trenches as I've heard and learned so much about them at school, TV documentaries and the Imperial War Museum.

I really enjoyed the Imperial War Museum on Saturday as there was so much to see, I'll have to go back and finish looking around. One would need a whole day at the museum. They had the Trench experience and the Blitz experience, complete with imagery, smells and noise. The smell was not that pleasant in the trenches but it makes one appreciate the struggles and hardship of soldiers at the front line.

The Holocaust exhibition was also there, quite a sobering experience and it had lots of Jewish mementos, belongings. They also had videos with survivors stories of this dark time, some of them had subtitles which really helped. Wish all videos had it. The materials from this time was stark to see and difficult to imagine the indignity of what they had to endure at the camps. There was a model scale of Auschwitz which really brought it home, complete with photography and clothing from that time.

Touched and peeked inside the tanks in the main hall, recalling grandpa's stories about the tanks and his time in North Africa with the Eighth Army Engineers - nicknamed the Rats. He said that the tanks were unbearable to live in due the cramped space in the high heat of the desert and the sandstorms. But the tanks did their jobs and saved lives and continued to push up from North Africa, through Egypt to Italy to the European offensive.

Preparations D-4

2009-05-17T14:01:00.004+01:00

After spending Saturday wandering around the Imperial war museum at Lambeth in London. I cannot postpone the need to prepare for the operation this coming Thursday. So came down my holiday suitcase which had the overnight bag in it. Can't open my suitcase with the combination I usually use. Panic set in and trying different combination's in vain to open my suitcase, none worked. I thought to myself, if I leave it till later when I'm a bit more calmer maybe the correct combination will pop into my head, and so that what I did. Left the suitcase in the corner while I got about doing house cleaning, making sure paperwork was in order etc...

Charged up my camera for Wednesday's trip to Ypres in Belgium, hear the weather is going to be good but knowing British weather do change out of turn so am touching it with a bit of salt and hope it will be a nice day out. Now the place is sorted and paperwork in order. So I got the suitcase back in and try again. Nope.. in frustration I sent an email to the suitcase manufacturers pleading for help to open it. I suspect they'll point me to a repairer and charge me for it - I hope not *fingers crossed*.

Am ready for work tomorrow. Got to start the handover temporarily but I plan to take my work home with me if I get bored at home.

And the Winner is...

2009-05-14T21:12:00.004+01:00

I've chosen Harmony by Advanced Bionics. The reason for choosing AB is the useability of the processor, it has a volume dial and program switches that are like the normal BTE hearing aids that I'm most accustomed to and that it has rechargeable batteries and colour accent caps.

I took a look at all the three brands and their processors prior making my decision. I quickly ruled out Med El due to the fact that there's no control switches on the processor itself, only on a remote control that I'd find it a bit daunting to remember as I do misplace things around the house. So Med El out, leaving Cochlear and Advanced Bionics.

So I played with them, wore it on and shaked my head to see if they'll fall off and fiddling the buttons and dials. It was becoming clearer that Advanced bionics would suit me better due to the design of the BTE. I found the Cochlear bte fiddly as one has to press the buttons and when I did this in situ - it came off, sounds like my ear cartilage is not that strong. I was more accustomed to having a dial and flick switches on the hearing aid and advanced bionics has this. Hence the final decision to go with Advanced Bionics.

Filled out the paperwork to recieve all the parts on activation day and chose Sophista colour accent caps to start me off with. Am pleased to hear that all processors has t-coil fitted internally as I use loops a lot, I mean a lot.

I then was taken up to the ward to have a look around so I know where I'll be on D-day, the ward is quite compact as opposed to seeing large wards in big hospitals. The nursing staff is quite friendly and answered my questions which was great.

Now all I gotta to do is to get my overnight bag ready and get the bits and pieces ready for the post op part. And to get some Euros for the day trip the day before the op *mental note - get some EUROS!* lol.

Eek...

2009-05-12T13:20:00.005+01:00

Got to drop by at the hospital this week to choose the CI implant. Spent today looking the specs of all three brands and ruled out Med El as it wasn't all that aesthetic looking processor, quite boxy than curved like normal hearing aids have. Quite a few of friends has either the Cochlear (Freedom) or Advanced Bionics (Harmony). Been weighing up the two brands and am finding that I'm leaning towards AB as it has more potiential for future upgrades plus it has more colour accents that one can use to customise the processor unit and the magnet. Will discuss this at the hospital with them and hope they can provide more insight than the ones I have at here. I've been asking friends questions questions about their implant ranging from - is it easy to wear, ease of use, battery life, what do the sounds like, failure rates etc... Decisions... Decisions...

After Thursday I'll have chosen a brand by then and that's it.

Med El - Opus 2 Processor

Cochlear - Freedom Processor

Advanced Bionics - Harmony Processor

Phew!

2009-05-11T08:09:00.026+01:00

Thank goodness that the cold is over. Got a icky throat which is gradually going away. Rang the hospital and they've said it should be OK for me to have the operation on the agreed scheduled date. I couldn't bear to wait any longer if it's postponed or moved down. I didn't expect to get anxious this early, it's not the operation itself, it's the location of the operation - namely the head. But I'm being very positive at the moment... But wonders if I'll grieve for the residual hearing that I have left that will be wiped out by the CI? (only 6% left)... I hope not but I reckon I'll probably go through all the motions after the op.

I can't believe it's coming up so soon, a week away now that I have the op on the 21st May 2009. I'm busily trying to sort everything at work before I sign off. Just a lot to do so I'm beavering away at the moment. Plus I'm looking forward to going to Belgium the day before the operation as a distraction. Trying to organise the Euros for the trip and looking up on Ypres (leper), because I like history, there's the famous Cloth hall that got flattened during WW1 and rebuilt shortly after, the Menin gate - a memorial arch for the soldiers with no known burials. And the trenches of WW1 just south of Ypres.

Surfing around

2009-05-08T00:45:00.003+01:00

With this cold, can't sleep well, it's nearly 2 am in the morning and I'm surfing the internet. Found couple more deaf websites to look into/to join. Hearing Journey - set up by Advanced Bionics - interesting site with lots of info and tips about CI. Even found the catalogue for CI equipment!

Dropped by in the All deaf website to catch up on any new updates on topics. Again a lot of varied reviews which makes an interesting read. Been following a thread about hearing aids and finding people have a 'marmite' attitude to hearing aids. I've found that I like hearing aids as they give me sound but wish for more and cannot think of living without them in. Strange uh? And the fact some prefer analogue over digital - I find that this is dependant on the type of hearing loss and how long one had analogue that the brain is hard wired and is reluctant to change. When I had the latest hearing aids, I did find it odd at first but then the brain re-wires itself to a certain degree. Even the audiologist said that there's no more gains to be gained, it's not the volume, its the information that's bugging me. It's like listening with a pair of cotton wool in your ears (not that I've experienced it but heard it on a tv programme years ago). With that muffled sound, certain words are missing from a sentence - that I hate, it makes my job so hard to understand what people say. Damn NHS!