The BIG Day: Activation of my Implant

My CI activation was a few days ago on April 15th - and I know many have been eagerly awaiting to hear how it all went.

In short it was AWESOME!

My mom and boyfriend Matt were there with me to celebrate my first experience with hearing again. Upon arrival, my audiologist (audie) Andrea took us to her office, sat me down in a chair and kicked off the activation. First, she used her testing unit to evaluate if the entire electrode array inserted in my cochlear was working properly (it was!), then she had me listen to a series of beeps to judge how sensitive I was to noise.

And then she brought out my new "ear" (am debating on what to call my "ear", haven't finalized its name, so for now I'll call it Chip - since its computer chip is allowing me to hear)... after Andrea set the sound threshold, I put on Chip for the first time.

Andrea started talking to see if I could hear anything and amazingly I could understand almost everything she was saying. However, she sounded like a high pitched robot! The more she talked the "clearer" it became. Clearer is in quotes because it's not really clear but I could distinguish words. What I didn't like however, was how I sounded to myself! I sounded like a weird voiced synthesized robot - which made it a bit challenging to determine how loud I was talking. Andrea said this was normal and I'll get used to "me" again soon.

Next, Andrea did a few tests to determine just how well I could hear. First, she sounded out some letter/vowel sounds (like ooo, eee, mmm, shh) with her mouth covered and I pointed to which she said. I quickly got all of them. "Next test is harder," she says. She placed a paper in front of me with pictures and associated two-syllable words such as baseball, hot dog, ice cream. For this test, she said one of the words with her mouth covered and I had to repeat what she said. Again, I got all of the words with no problem. "One more test, this one the most difficult." With her mouth covered, she said random two-syllable words (this time there was no help sheet to choose from) and I was to repeat. One or two of the words she had to say twice before I could understand - but I got 100% correct!! During my first hearing test after I started to lose my hearing last June- I only got 75% and that was at a volume about 10 times louder than normal!!

I was quite happy. But then she said: "Your progress in the last 5 minutes normally takes most people 5 MONTHs"!! That really put it into context just how well I did.

Now for most of you "hearing" folk reading this - it may not seem like a big deal - being able to understand a few words. But imagine if you weren't able to do this for over a year or understand anything someone said without focusing on their lips while they talked!

When the "testing" portion was over, Andrea delved into details about my implant (like how to put it together, care for it, change batteries) and described everything that was part of my kit. I could understand a lot of what she was saying without even watching her lips! I'll post a few pictures soon of Chip and my "goody" box.

And that concluded my "Activation".

I wore Chip for the rest of the day. My mom and Matt sounded really funny. If I wasn't watching them, I wouldn't know who was talking. Basically all people's voices sound like computer-synthesized voices.

Here are some of the things I heard on the first day (some of which I don't think I ever realized I could hear before because you just don't pay attention to such small things when you can hear everything!):

• My heels clicking on the concrete
• Rain on the car windows during the drive home - sounded like static
• Some of what my Mom was saying on the phone in the back seat of the car without watching her talk
  
• My fingers tapping computer keys, actually I went around my house to see if I could hear other things too, like my kitchen timer and microwave buttons (I haven't heard those since maybe early September)
  
• Matt talking on the phone in other room - could only understand one or two words he said though
  
• Matt telling Lanie (one of my doggies) to sit when he was outside my condo door in the hallway
  
• The sound of milk pouring in my glass
• And I could understand a good portion of what people were saying on TV - even understood some of the words that CC missed (and some of the commercials which tend not to be CC)

What a great first day -even in spite of it all being like synthesized robots!