- Joined
- Aug 7, 2008
- Messages
- 4,335
- Reaction score
- 5
So my activation day came on December 18th (yesterday). Just in case, here is a little background story of my deafness. I was born profoundly deaf (90+ dB loss both ears) and wore hearing aids since I was 18 months old.
My mom and a good friend came with me. It was strange when the audiologist put the magnet on me, its sort of an official realization "wow I really do have a magnet in my skull!". The aud. started off with a sweep of the channels doing pulses, so the first thing I "heard" was pulses. Look, I'm 26 years old, can take a lot, not girly AT ALL, and the sensation of "hearing" those pulses were so surreal, offbase, and so not what I expected. It's a very surprising feeling. Almost as if my head was throbbing along with the pulses (without any pain). My hands started shaking and I was tearing up, not really out of joy or anything like that, but just sheer confusion and from being overwhelmed. Of course, I tried to play it cool (can't lose my bad ass reputation!
) , blinkin away any swelling up in my eyes, and said "oh hey I can hear pulses...cool". It's a very strange feeling because I keep expecting to HEAR, but I don't feel that I hear sounds, it seems that I FEEL the sounds. I am at a VERY low volume due to my degree of deafness and the fact I've never really used much of my auditory nerve. So this week is more about stimulating my auditory nerve rather than hearing. And it is so true. The auditory put in 7 programs in my CI. Each program is one volume level higher, so that if I get comfortable with this level, I can press a button on the CI to go to the next level. So yesterday I started off with level 1, and even though I had an overwhelmed feeling initially, I got used to it and comfortable after only 3-4 hours. However, everytime I put it a higher level, the cycle starts over again. I am at level 3 now (after less than 24 hours, not bad) but I am still getting used to it. However, by now it's obvious that I am aware of more sounds even though its still at such a low volume. That is pretty exciting.
I can see why some people get so overwhelmed upon getting the CI, it DEFINITELY isn't some easy miracle. It's a process and you have to keep at it. I've wanted to put on my hearing aid several times because at this point, I hear way more with the hearing aid than the CI.
They gave me a journal to write in about what I hear, etc., and I thought "That's so lame!". I'm eating my own words, cuz I am so doing that..
My mom and a good friend came with me. It was strange when the audiologist put the magnet on me, its sort of an official realization "wow I really do have a magnet in my skull!". The aud. started off with a sweep of the channels doing pulses, so the first thing I "heard" was pulses. Look, I'm 26 years old, can take a lot, not girly AT ALL, and the sensation of "hearing" those pulses were so surreal, offbase, and so not what I expected. It's a very surprising feeling. Almost as if my head was throbbing along with the pulses (without any pain). My hands started shaking and I was tearing up, not really out of joy or anything like that, but just sheer confusion and from being overwhelmed. Of course, I tried to play it cool (can't lose my bad ass reputation!
) , blinkin away any swelling up in my eyes, and said "oh hey I can hear pulses...cool". It's a very strange feeling because I keep expecting to HEAR, but I don't feel that I hear sounds, it seems that I FEEL the sounds. I am at a VERY low volume due to my degree of deafness and the fact I've never really used much of my auditory nerve. So this week is more about stimulating my auditory nerve rather than hearing. And it is so true. The auditory put in 7 programs in my CI. Each program is one volume level higher, so that if I get comfortable with this level, I can press a button on the CI to go to the next level. So yesterday I started off with level 1, and even though I had an overwhelmed feeling initially, I got used to it and comfortable after only 3-4 hours. However, everytime I put it a higher level, the cycle starts over again. I am at level 3 now (after less than 24 hours, not bad) but I am still getting used to it. However, by now it's obvious that I am aware of more sounds even though its still at such a low volume. That is pretty exciting. I can see why some people get so overwhelmed upon getting the CI, it DEFINITELY isn't some easy miracle. It's a process and you have to keep at it. I've wanted to put on my hearing aid several times because at this point, I hear way more with the hearing aid than the CI.
They gave me a journal to write in about what I hear, etc., and I thought "That's so lame!". I'm eating my own words, cuz I am so doing that..
