Activation appt cancelled. . .

What a good start! :) I can feel the excitement through the screen heh heh!

Yes, keeping a journal was the best thing I did. You'll find that some days will be hard work in the beginning and it's handy to see how you have progressed. My friend gave me the idea as her first activation was a nightmare and it was only 6 months later that she fell in love with her CI.

Voices sounded funny to me by the end of the first day, but I could understand them amazingly. After that, they progressively sounded better and better with each map.
 
Oh & I forgot to say. I ended up having a super sore throat yesterday, the day before my appt. I was terrified it was gonna progress to where I'd get sick & would have to miss my activation appt! As I went to bed, I started feeling sooo terribile so I thought "great, I'm gonna be sick, I just know it!" and took some type of cold meds then went to bed. Next morning I woke up w/ still having a sore throat but was feeling super. So I thought I was worried for nothing.

Wrong!!! I am feeling awful right now. :/ But the impt is that I made it!!! Heh! :]
 
That's so exciting! I cant wait to hear wat other new experiences you will have!... I know when i get my ha it wontbe as exciting but I'll definitely write as well when I get mh ha...

Now u have to change ur sig to activated june 2007:cool::ty:

Did your kids notice a difference?
 
lilitalia89 - My kids are 4 and 6. So they aren't really able to notice, or if they did, they didn't care much, due to being kids. They do know I 'wear something new on my head' lol. Hm wait - they do notice a lil bit of a difference. When we were on our way home, I clapeed to myself, curious if it still sounded odd like when the audi did it - but it was starting to sound normal when I did it. Then the girls started clapping & I could tell excatly which one were clapping & when both of them were clapping together! That was neat, being able to tell the difference. :D

I wore hearing aids all my life - you'll most likely love it just as much as I did. I could never go a day without my hearing aids. So you can imagine how sad I was when I couldn't wear my R HA anymore - which is how I got to where I am now with the CI in my R ear. :]

Do you have a progressive hearing loss or? I ask cause I am curious if you will one day be considering CI's after a time comes that HA is no longer benefitting you?
 
Aww thats so cute that you can hear that, it's prolly a really good feeling! I cant wait til i can hear the small things again like the refrigerator or the fan and car noises etc...or my bf whispering! lol lil jerk tries to trick me sometimes lol...

They don't really know if my loss is progressive or not yet...lol Which sounds kinda bad but i only found out i was hoh 2 years ago and they are pretty sure its because of all the ear infections i had when i was younger + the rupture of my right ear drum twice. That's why they think it's worse in my right ear instead of my left (never rupture that one-thank god). If my loss does get worse they said they don't see it reaching as far as profound or severe...but if it did i prolly would consider a ci ..i'm a big chicken when it comes to surgeries and stuff..lol so that would be a big decision! So for now and hopefully ever ill just stick with ha's :ty:
What color is your CI? i almost got pink for my ha but i decided just to go for black since my hair is black:cool:
 
lilitalia89: My CI is brown. I grew up having beige HA's all my life so I didn't care one way or the other. lol. Maybe if I was younger I'd want a specific color or something but at 28, I just don't care.
 
deafmama,

My CI journal is located at: Welcome to CI Hear 's Deafblind Information Page

Click on the link "New Beginnings." I also wrote a short piece about my activation day, first day of hearing and bilateral surgery. To read them, click on the links that read "Lisa's Activation Day," "Lisa's First Day of Sound" and "Lisa Has Bilateral Surgery."

Unfortunately, my CI journal isn't completely up to date on that website, but it at least gives you some idea of what my early experiences were like. :)
 
Congrats on your activation! Glad to read that all is well. :)
 
Thanks Shel!

My Mom was surprised yesterday when she IM'd me and asked me how the CI was going & so I told her. Then I told her that I hate anything to do with plastic bags!!! And turning the pages of my husband's RD magazines is also soo annoying. While I have heard both of those sounds before with just HA it wasn't as. . . I don't know the word I'm looking for but yeah as it is with the CI! Maybe that's just cause everything still sounds so high & metaliac as someone else worded it. Will the sound of plastic bags and page turning improve? lol.

Annnddddd I surprised her even more with telling her that I woke up yesterday, put on the HA and CI and heard myself whistling thru my nose since it was still kinda stuffy then a few minutes later it wasnt stuffy anymore and the whistling sound went away but I could still hear myself breathe. I have also heard it with just HA's before but not as well as I do with both HA and CIs on.

I have a question - how come when I only have the CI or only have the HA on, it seems like I don't hear as well but when I have both on, I hear 1000x better?! While I still don't hear voices normal yet, I am loving this! I was able to follow the words along with captions on regular TV shows, not live game shows due to captions lagging behind & voices sounding kinda far away so they weren't as understandable as regular shows are. Weird?
I smiled when I realized I was able to pick up words as I read the captions. I haven't been able to do that in about 6 yrs, while I had both HA's I was always able to do that and I truly missed it!!! Wow! I also watched National Bingo Night, since we were playing right along [I didn't get a bingo, dang!] I was just so surprised at how I could hear Ed's english accent as he is from the UK. I knew I heard his accent before with just HA while he was on the Extreme Home Makeover show but again, with HA & CI- it was like I could hear it sooo much better. My Audi has told me that I will hear everything so much better than I ever have. She was totally right. This is freaking awesome!!!

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooo glad I went thru the pains to get to where I am now!!!
 
deamama,

The reason you don't hear as well unilaterally (meaning with your CI or HA alone) is because sounds aren't as full or detailed as they are with both. I've found the same to be true. When I hear environmental sounds, voices or music with only one CI, sounds are "tinny" and a little more difficult to hear.

In regards to your comment about the way page turning sounds, I believe the description you are looking for is that it sounds sharp or crisp with the CI as opposed to dull with HAs -- or at least that's the way it sounded to me. :)

As for the sound of plastic bags rustling, that will improve over time as your map becomes more stable and your dynamic range (the area between the softest and loudest sounds you can hear) expands. At this point, you have a very limited dynamic range meaning that the frequencies you hear right now are what is most likely causing that sound to be uncomfortable for you. With each mapping, your dynamic range will expand allowing you to hear more frequencies clearly.

In regards to voices sounding "far away," I also have that experience when watching TV. I think it has to do with the way certain programs are recorded. I've also noticed that when I flip through the channels, some TV programs sound much louder and clearer than others. (Speaking of TV, have you ever noticed how much *louder* TV commercials are than regular programming? After my first CI was activated, I almost fell out of my chair while watching a TV program and having a commercial come on the air. The sound was so unexpectedly loud that I made a mad dash for the remote so I could turn the volume down. LOL!)

Being able to hear accents is exciting isn't it? I can still remember the first time I not only heard -- but understood -- an Indian taxi driver. I kept shaking my head in disbelief asking myself, "Did I just hear that?" LOL!

I'm glad you're happy with your decision to get a CI! :)

You have so much to look forward to and I can't wait to read more about your experiences! :)
 
Last edited:
Hear Again said:
Being able to hear accents is exciting isn't it? I can still remember the first time I not only heard -- but understood -- an Indian taxi driver. I kept shaking my head in disbelief asking myself, "Did I just hear that?" LOL!

QUOTE]

I work with people who immigrated from places like Bosnia, Romania, Russia, Kosovo and Somalia. When I had HA's I really had to stuggle to understand their accents. If I talked to them enough I would eventually get to understand with lip reading what they said, it was really a struggle tho. Now with Ci I understand most quite well without alot of stuggle. Except for the older Bosnian man I work with, his english is hard to understand, he seems to have a good understanding but his speech is very low frequency wise and just not very clear. Now in bosnian he's evidently not hard to understand since he answers his fellow bosnians quite well. :)
Click to expand...
 
i'm a big chicken when it comes to surgeries and stuff..lol so that would be a big decision!"
Click to expand...

Yeah, me too. I'm on the wait list now for a CI and the surgery part is what really scares me. Maybe I'll post some pics of my scars for you!
 
slick said:
Yeah, me too. I'm on the wait list now for a CI and the surgery part is what really scares me. Maybe I'll post some pics of my scars for you!
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that the actual surgery, well watching it, wouldn't bother me..i love shows like er and trauma n stuff so the scar part wud be cool maybe..just me myself wouldn't want to have surgery, im really scared when I have to get needles ...but i have a tattoo..figure that one out..lol
 
Back
Top