Well, this past Monday I went in to HEI to pick up my very own Harmony just a month after having to leave behind the trial model at AB along with F120.

Maybe it's the wider pulsewidth Aniket programmed for me before I left that last day. Maybe it's the fact all 16 of my electrodes are back on now after electrode 1 had been turned off since last summer in response to the unusual impedence I was experiencing on that electrode, giving me 7 additional channels over what I had in the trial. Maybe I'm picking up right where I left off with F120 a month ago without having to start over. When it comes to the reduced speech discrimination I was experiencing with F120 during the month long trial, it's not manifesting.

On Monday, my Harmony was loaded up with F120 on Full BTE Mic on Slot 1, Hi Res P with the 1st electrode turned off as before on Slot 2 for me to fall back on if needed, and Aux Only (Direct Connect or T Mic Ear Hook only) input with F120 with the AGC turned off on Slot 3. My PSP was also loaded up similarly.

Before leaving I was tested in booth using both Hi Res P and F120. I don't really remember what my single word score was other than it had improved over last time around because I was paying more attention to the fact my dismal 17 percent HINT Sentence score from my last visit to HEI shot up to 57 percent this week while using F120. Dawna, my dear audie, was floored herself. The thing is, it was still "settling in" while I was in that booth so I can only imagine what it's going to be at my next visit in May.

Talk radio is really starting to get easy to listen to. Keep in mind, my listening to KFI AM 640 takes place in my car which is ridiculously noisy due to the fact the car is basically falling apart. Then there is the fact my antenna is broken so reception is hard to come by...it comes thru best crackling on the Freeway and it goes away every time I go under an overpass. I've mentioned these details before. What's different is I'm no longer just understanding groups of words here and there or phone numbers...I'm pretty much locked in to what I would guess to be about 95 percent of what comes over the airwaves. It's been almost amusing to me as I listen to the commercials and news bits come through.....it takes me back to being 5 or 6 years old riding in the car with my Mom and brother to school in the morning while listening to "Chicken Man" (a parody of Batman) on the radio. I've mostly avoided the radio since those days. It was Wednesday that I realized the jump in speech discrimination while listening to the radio as I wound up listening to the entire Presidential speech while driving to work. I'm now making a point of just listening to the radio on my drives to and from work rather than music just for the fact it's really opening up those listening pathways.

Music takes over once I get to the office and my experience with it through F120 has been just as exhilarating. For 8 hours, Music is piped directly to my brain from my Creative Zen MP3 Player. The first few days I heard the familiar "roughness" at times that I've experienced with all of my previous strategies, but each day over this past week has also shown a smoothening of that roughness. I did have a great moment when I realized that the Everly Brother's "Cathy's Clown" sounds exactly like it does with normal hearing! There is an instrument part following the lyric "I die each time.." and "I hear this sound.." which I believe is a brass instrument that was absent with Hi Res and I couldn't really hear it all of these years with my hearing aid either. I remembered it and knew it should be there..25 years later there it is with F120. This was one of the songs embedded in my head that I had planned to use to test the CI for accuracy and it passed.

I don't think I'll be needing that HI Res P back-up on Slot 2.

I die each time
I hear this sound
here he comes
that's Cathy's Clown
Cathy's Clown - The Everly Brothers

The timing of my being fit with the Harmony and F120 was practically prophetic. That coming weekend marked my return to one of my favorite past-times, live music. Flanked by two friends, I returned to one of my favorite rock clubs in the Valley to see a tribute to Pink Floyd, Which One’s Pink. This was to serve as a warm-up for my first concert coming up the following Tuesday, Paul Stanley at the House of Blues, to which I had purchased a ticket for a month prior. The House of Blues, as some may remember, was where I was jolted into the reality of losing my hearing in the summer of 2005. My hearing in my “good” ear had blown out during the first song of Whitesnake’s set. I hadn’t been to any live shows since out of fear of repeating that experience. With the implant, loud music seemed to distort or overpower the processor. Music was actually clearer at conservative volumes. So I was not in a rush to find out how it handled live concerts, fearing it would be a mess of hazy drowned out noise.

In the week leading up to the warm-up gig, I began to get acclimated to my new hardware and software. I fell in love with the Harmony from day one. The first night I was home from AB, it was an unseasonably hot day in Southern California. While at home that night, I found myself walking around shirtless with total freedom to turn my head without fear of the headpiece being ripped off for the first time in months! If I had tried this before, the friction from the wire rubbing on my bare back would have limited mobility.

Having worn a hearing aid for so many years, I felt far more confident with something sitting on my ear in the same manner than I did with a headpiece. The Harmony headpiece (the same as with Auria) is smaller and sleeker than the PSP’s as well as only a short wire connected to the Processor. To those looking at it, they would either see a hearing aid or bluetooth device, allowing me to either deal with a familiar attention-getter or simply blend in. Actually the fact that it’s black (well, technically it’s “dark sienna” but I prefer to just call it black) goes a long way in adding to the cool factor.

The T-Mic was one feature I had really been looking forward to trying since I had done my initial research prior to implantation. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that it would not work with my Sidekick II cell phone because it picks up the electronic pulses it emits. I could listen through it, but it wasn’t fun to do. I had already not bothered with asking the Tele-coil be activated on the processor since I knew the Sidekick wouldn’t work with that either already from trying it with my hearing aid tele-coil prior to getting the CI. That left me with either taking the hands-free ear bud as I had been with the PSP and placing it in my ear so the T Mic could pick it up, or holding the phone to the BTE-Mic placed at the top of my ear.

Listening through F120 that first week was an adjustment. As with all strategies, my brain had to adapt to it before it would begin to maximize it’s potential. My speech discrimination ability took a noticeable couple of steps back, which I found quite frustrating. This is normal when starting a new strategy be it CIS, SAS, MPS, or Hi Res. You start over each time. What was different with F120 from starting a new strategy for me was that it was more readily natural and pleasant sounding. There were no cars whizzing by sounding like mosquitos, they sounded exactly like they should. There was less of that graininess of sound one gets when a strategy is settling in. Yet, I could tell that I was only beginning to learn to process the stimulation. This wasn’t going to be “instant-on.” I had a learning curve to overcome.

Music did change. The first thing I noticed was those guitar solos seemed to have much brighter “color” to them on top of the fact that they just jumped out more than with previous strategies. The second thing I noticed was the relatively rich bass of my Hi Res P program I had waiting for me on Slot 3 that my F120 program was built up on was not too present. So I didn’t feel anchored to a bottom end. I hadn’t forgotten that I felt this way about Hi Res P in comparison with MPS when I had started out with those…so I knew that was an aspect that had to settle in yet. Not only that, but it was only a couple of days into using F120 that I tried switching back to Hi Res P for a couple of moments and found it sounded muddy, sending me right back to F120.

It was at Paladino’s that weekend in the San Fernando Valley that I had my first highlight moments with F120. Actually, it was on the way there. It turns out my processor quite likes my roommates stereo in his truck. The sound of the music was vibrant and alive. The various layers were cutting through rather than sounding muted and muddy as it does in my own car. Apparently I have crappy speakers.

When we got to the valley to pick up our other friend, we switched cars and I found myself in the front passenger seat while we drove to go eat dinner. As we conversed while driving, I listened to my roommate sitting the backseat without turning around to look at him. Normally I’d just tune myself out of a three-way conversation in a car since it was too much work, but I just sat there and chatted away nearly effortlessly.

When we got to the club, the Journey tribute-band “Lights” was playing. As with my roommates truck stereo system, I found that even with the in your face volume of the live band did not degrade going through my processor. I’ve never been a Journey fan and I am not familiar with their material, but I found myself liking the band anyway. It was also the first time I understood the between song banter out of all of the live shows I’ve been to over the years. At one point I started looking up their website when the singer announced the URL to us.

The Pink Floyd tribute band was my first chance to listen to a live band with music that I actually know. The results were very satisfying. I found myself hearing pretty much every note of the guitars cutting cleanly through. With my hearing aid, they would have been muted and indistinct. Before I left the club that night, I knew that live music was back in my life for certain for the first time since I had gotten the implant.

The Paul Stanley concert at the House of Blues the following Tuesday maintained those satisfying results. At the club in the valley, I was close enough to where I could read lips and therefore question my real ability to understand speech in that environment. At the House of Blues it is a much larger venue and I was not close enough to be speech reading. Yet, I understood nearly every word of Paul’s between song banter. The details of the musical performance were very accessible to me. There were songs I didn’t know that well that I wound up getting into as a result of the performances. It had been a year and a half since it was practically thrown in my face that those pleasures were being taken away from me at that very same venue, so the realization that I was there again and I had succeeded in getting that back get me emotional while surrounded by throngs of KISS fans.

The following weekend I went to see the play “Grease” with my neighbors. It was only when we arrived at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center that we realized we had purchased tickets to a High School play, which closer inspection of our tickets that we bought through Ticket Maser revealed. We forced ourselves to go in anyway and give it a chance. We live here so we might as well support our community. Unfortunately, I did not get quite the same positive results at the play as I did the concerts. I barely understood most of the dialogue. However, the performances of the songs, which convinced us to stay, were another story. Some of these kids were good, real good. One of the highlights turned out to be “Freddy My Love,” a song not performed on the movie that is on the album sound track done by Cindy Bullens. In this play, the character of Marty, one of the Pink Ladies, performs it. She actually did a better job than Cindy Bullens and I found myself thinking she was lip-syncing, which she wasn’t. I never even really cared for that particular song, but you couldn’t deny her delivery. The other highlight was Rizzo’s “There Are Worse Things I Could Do,” which had us bordering on tears. The singers carried these performances and I was able to appreciate every detail of it through F120.

Speaking of “Grease,” the original movie soundtrack album was used to gauge F120’s ability to faithfully recreate the original sound. It was that album that I had spent countless hours blasting straight to my ear prior to losing it as a child, so the details are embedded into memory. Collectively, the songs provided a healthy range of instruments with plenty of brass interlaced between the guitars and drums. Only seconds into the opening title track, “Grease” I noticed a subtle sweep of the keyboard keys had become quite prominent and natural sounding compared to Hi Res. Franki Valli’s voice sounded just as I remembered it sounding when it was making the rounds in heavy rotation on the radio back when it was new, not quite being sure whether it was a man or a woman at the time (I thought it was an old woman.) The brass solos in Greased Lightening and Born to Hand Jive were much more natural as well as standing out in the mix. The strings in “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing” were lush and smooth.

Over the month, the real hurdle was getting speech discrimination to where I need it to be. This brings me to stressing a very important point on the eve of roll-out of the Harmony and F120. Those who have gone before me have stressed this point, too and it is an important one for all to remember who go into this strategy. Learning Curve. F120 is an advanced strategy that delivers a lot of detailed information to the hearing nerve as well as an amped up IDR of 96 db. These differences are very evident from the get-go, but deriving the full benefit takes time. It was not until the last week that speech discrimination began to approach their previous best levels that I have experienced since implantation and even then needed more time. Settle in and go the distance. If you go in to get mapped with F120 expecting to be wowed before you even leave the office, you’ll be setting yourself up for disappointment. The strategy needs to be used consistently and persistently before the full benefits are realized.

One indicator of improvement in speech that last week of using F120 was while listening to KFI AM 640 talk radio while driving to and from work. In this environment, I am hearing through the road and car noise to poor radio perception due to a broken antenna. On one particular night, there were several speakers at once going back and forth. I found myself understanding them almost fluidly as opposed to being thrown every time they switched speakers.

When I went back in to AB last week to turn in the Harmony and go back to my PSP, I missed the sound quality of F120 immediately. It was a case of don’t know what you got until it’s gone. Hi Res P sounded dead and hollow by comparison. On the bright side, I have since found out I will only need to go one more month without my Harmony and F120 as it will be waiting for me when I next go into see my own audiologist at HEI just after the holidays. It’s the perfect way to start off 2007.

They say it's over
But I have just begun to fight
It may look hopeless
But that's the moment from what's right
Someday, someway, somewhere
I'm gonna take you there
Where angels dare to fly
Some people wait forever
Some people just run out of time
Some people live in darkness
And give up just before the light
You (you), me (me)
No we won't back down
Let all the others wait
I want someday, someway, right now
Where Angels Dare - Paul Stanley

It was just over 3 weeks ago on a Monday morning that I found myself
sitting in the R & D department of Advanced Bionics in Sylmar. I'd be
lying if I said I wasn't excited. Participating in Clinical Trials
that have anything to do with bettering hearing in any manner had long
been something I had dreamed of doing since I was a 7 year old kid
willing to do whatever it took to get better again and help the rest
of the world in the process.

Of course, the fact that I was about to be unleashed from the wire
that had been running down from my headpiece above my ear and clipped
in the middle of my neck to my shirt running down my back to a box
perched on my waist by being fit with the new as-yet unreleased
Harmony BTE Processor was enough to sustain the side of me that
couldn't care less about saving the world. Slather on the being
mapped with Fidelity 120 on the new processor as dessert and it was
"Let's ride!!!"

I have to shake my head when I think of the R & D team at AB. I'd
heard the stories before…I guess I just had to experience it for
myself. I am certainly proud to know these are the people behind the
implant in my head. They play a vital part of the process that leads
the technology to us. They are passionate people and it shines both
in the job they perform as well as their personalities.

The bulk of the two consecutive days I spent at AB were with Aniket
Saoji. Aniket is one of the most pleasant people I've ever met in my
life. He takes pride in causing people to heap praise on him for his
mapping skills. I'd heard of his work before in others and here I was
experiencing it.

Aniket started the first day off by fitting me with the Harmony in
Silver outfitted with a T-Mic. He transferred my existing Hi Res P
from my PSP to the Harmony and had me try it out. For some reason,
despite the fact that it was the same program I had been using all
along on my PSP, I was hearing everything as if it were heard through
the blades of a fan. No one else had ever reported this happening
before so apparently I was breaking new ground. Aniket didn't waste
any time calling in troops to solve the problem. Aniket took my Hi
Res P map and used it to build my F120 Strategy on the other slot.
When he had me switch over to F120, the chopped sound effect
disappeared and I was hearing with 120 Channels for the first time.

Hearing with 120 Channels was as if new areas of the auditory cloud
cover had opened up in a haze and the overall light was brighter in a
blinding sense. I found it more difficult to understand speech, being
that my sense of hearing was being fed new information in new locales
within my cochlea. Just as it was when I was initially mapped with Hi
Res P, I had to settle in to it.

Then the work began and again, I would be breaking new ground. I was
the first to participate in a new trial that involved hooking me up to
a Computer running software that would actually switch between
strategies on the fly while I would just listen as they switched on
me. There were a number of kinks that had yet to be worked out that I
was able to bring their attention to.
Lunch took place in the conference room with the rest of the R & D
Staff. At this point, I was using F120, mostly as a way to let it
start settling in. It wasn't as easy to discriminate speech, I also
noticed that I was hearing more..and it's all coming in at once.
However, I managed to have quite an enjoyable conversation with
everyone sitting at the table without exerting too much effort.

Just before leaving the first day, Aniket had tweaked a strategy that
I found immediately pleasing. It had the richer bass of MPS yet the
sharp treble and detail of Hi Res. Having just come off a few weeks
of a turning-stale Hi Res map prior to walking into AB, I was never
more thrilled in my life over a strategy right out of the starting
gate. I immediately made some calls upon leaving the office with my
cell to test it out. After speaking with several different people,
while driving in my car, I had the CD Player going the whole 50 minute
or so trip back home. It seemed logical that I was hearing with F120,
also taking into account that with Hi Res through the Harmony, I was
getting the fan effect. That program was on the other slot and I
wasn't about to go near it.

The next day Aniket revealed what the strategy I was enjoying was…Hi
Res P. He had tweaked my strategy to not only get rid of the
chopped-sound effect, but also made it far more pleasing. I most
certainly did be sure to dole out compliments to him on having done so
well with creating that program.

By the end of the 2nd day, the Harmony was programmed with F120 on
full T-mic on slot 1, F120 with full BTE Mic on Slot 2, and the
aforementioned Hi Res P on full T-mic on Slot 3. I also managed to
get Aniket to switch the Silver Harmony for a Dark Sienna, the color
my own Harmony will be when I receive it. So with that, I left AB to
begin my first foray into using the Harmony BTE and 120 Channels out
in the real world.

Looking for a thrill
You'll get it my way
Let's hit the highway
and I'll take you down
Shoot out in the night
Lookin for action
the main attraction
is back in town
Under The Gun - KISS

I decided it was high time I sat down and fed into this. Changes in my personal life put my focus on the CI off, while things still unfolded related to that. My heart just wasn't in it to talk about it. Yet, I had my 3rd month post-activation mapping happen as well as the passing of my blog's 1 year anniversary. I had originally planned to post on the day of the anniversary..but just couldn't find the fuel to do so. What I wanted to write was not appropriate for this journal focusing on my CI and how my life is impacted by it. As a result, it died around here for a while while I channeled my energy towards getting through another trial.

The anniversary of my blog was definitely worth pausing to look back on things. In August of 2005, I was quite uncertain of what lay ahead. I was determined to make it happen, but I was afraid that I'd be thrust into a world of alien sound. There were people talking about it sounding like natural hearing, but then there were people who were talking about how mechanical it sounds. Nevermind those complaints about how horrible music sounded. The one theme was that they all seemed to have improved speech discrimination abilities. With my hearing slippping, priorities took over. I was already getting a taste of what it's like to be cut off from the world on that level...having it get worse wasn't an option.

If anyone told me at that time, when I had just picked out the device to be implanted in my ear at the evaluation testing, that I would be where I am at now...I'd have laughed and dismissed them. I had no idea that the phone would be back in my life. Not just part-time either. Those phone minutes on my cell are actually getting used. The relay service has become a museum piece. On the Friday just prior to the weekend of my blog's anniversary on August 21st, I called up the clinic to pay my medical bill using my bank card. She had a spanish accent and I had to correct her on the card number when she repeated it back wrong. It took 2 minutes to do a task by just picking up the phone and calling versus the 10 minutes to call through a relay service and get through the transaction. This was the first cold call I had ever made to someone I've never talked to before in my life. A week later at the mapping, in-booth testing would find my sentence discrimination scores at 80% up from 50% at the previous mapping at the one-month post activation point. The kind of thing I barely allowed myself to dream of a year prior turned reality 3 months into post-activation.

Since then, I have also dealt with my auto-mechanic with their customary call-back after you take the car in and they tell you what's wrong with it and how much. This is something that is rather hellish to do through the relay service since the people in those places tend to hang up before the relay operator can get past "California Relay Service with a call.." Then if you do manage to get them stay on the line to be able to communicate to them, they are generally annoyed and you spend the first minute or two just trying to get them to work with you and get to the real stuff. Apparently those days are behind me now, too. I've found myself in various situations that required I speak with people I've never spoken to before on the phone. For the most part, it goes well. There are people that are difficult to understand without repeats...but there are also those that require very little repeating. That is what encourages me to just keep diving in to the deep end.

Music......there are times I break into fits of laughter while listening to it because I'm in awe of the detail I'm hearing. My fears concerning the possible loss of music as a source of enjoyment post-implant were dismissed early on. Not only can I enjoy the tones of music, but understanding what is being sung without a lyric sheet is creeping in. Then there is the fact that as a fan of listening to live recordings...I'm actually able to enjoy the between-song banter as the performer speaks to the audience. It was always something to skip over.

The 3rd month mapping brought about some changes. I came to the full realization that mappings generally mean that whatever progress I have made with the sound quality improvement will be set back temporarily again. I've read it mentioned by others, but you really do pretty much start over with each mapping since you must readjust each time, but each time it is being tightened up..fine tuned. My comfort levels were increased, while my thresholds stayed the same. MPS, which had been settling in nicely with music, lost it's pleasing sound after the mapping. Hi Res was again proving to be the choice for clearer speech, but neither were really giving me music the way it was just prior to the mapping. Both were resembling how they sounded in the initial weeks post-activation. So that put me off being excited about mappings...for two weeks.

Two weeks later, music started smoothing out..on Hi Res. It wasn't perfect and I had to keep a conservative volume, but it was getting there. It improved as each day passed. I would only switch to MPS briefly, but not be satisfied with how it was processing. Where last time around, I started out with Hi Res, which declined in quality when my volume needs increased and I wound up switching to MPS full time by the time of the 3rd mapping...this time around Hi Res is the only strategy I am using now a month and a half since the mapping. I found the trick was to stick with it rather than switching back and forth. It turns out that MPS is easier to take on and settle into more quickly than Hi Res is. This was influenced by my listening to music since it just sounded more readily pleasing with MPS. I gritted my teeth through less than pleasing bouts of music-listening through Hi Res and have since been rewarded with the kind of results MPS was bringing at it's height and the light continues to break through the haze.

There is also the fact that the FDA requirement for using the 120 channel strategy is 3 months of Hi Res usage. Had I stuck with MPS, that would have been a concern. I imagine my Audie would have allowed me to try 120 regardless...but I wouldn't have gained the patience required for allowing an advanced strategy to settle in. Looks like I'll be ready to go now that the processor and the strategy have been approved for the U.S. and will begin to be rolled out in January of 2007, just 3 or so months away.

It's difficult for me to complain too much about life these days when I realize the blessings bestowed on me. I find myself generally happier and less stressed out by everyday things simply because the world is opening up. The same problems are there, but they just don't cause my smile to crack so easily anymore. Even when I'm down, I have still have the blessing of turning to music to get me through. Ironic.

I can't write a love song the way I feel today
I can't sing no song of hope I got nothing to say
Life is feeling kind of strange since you went away
I sing this song to wherever you are
As my guitar lies bleeding in my arms
My Guitar Lies Bleeding In My Arms - Bon Jovi

When I was 3 years old, people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wonder, did the fact they may be applying a bit too much pressure on a toddler occur to them when they posed that question? Nevertheless, I knew even then I wanted to be Spiderman. An early venture into that future career involved falling off the back of a truck parked in the driveway while fending off the bad guys (the next door neighbor and his visiting friend.) I don't think Spiderman runs inside crying. The bad guy got his when our dog, Jake, let him know what he thought of his hand being near his food. My hero.

Cut to some 30 or so years later, I have spent hours patrolling Manhattan swinging on a web line through corridors of buildings. I've walked up to the Empire State Building and climbed it all the way to the top to see the city of New York all around me. I've hitched a ride on a helicopter out to Liberty Island and climbed up the Statue. I've whupped purse snatcher's butts and returned the purse to the owner to receive their gratitude. All possible via modern technology through video games. Here's the view from the Empire State Building tower. Yes, that's the Met Life building in the background.


The games of today barely resemble the games of the 1980s when coin arcades were huge. Nor do they have much in common with the home systems like Atari or Nintendo. The games of today weren't even possible then. Besides the obvious graphical improvement..there is the artificial intelligence as well as the sheer size. Entire virtual worlds that are wide open for you to explore are available now. While credit goes to the fantasy game, Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for presenting the first open kingdom, the format was first popularized by the release of Grand Theft Auto III, a game where you took on the life of a con man. The theme was similar to the film "Payback" with Mel Gibson. Night and Day passes. It rains, the sun shines. You can take a walk along the bay just looking at the city across the river or you can carjack whatever car you see that you like. You have various contacts throughout the city. There was no maze to walk through or just moving from point A to point B to finish the game. You had to actually learn your way around the town just as you would any real life town. It is a simulator. You get to live the life of someone else in another world. Playing as Spiderman enables you to get a feel for what any average night is for the wallcrawler as well as just the thrill of having all of his abilities. You actually do have to practice to learn how to webswing which requires figuring out where you want to shoot out a webline to while swinging, throwing your body weight to manipulate your direction and speed. Plus navigating around the buildings without crashing into them. Most people trying it out for the first time tend to give up and just run on the sidewalk.

When Spiderman 2 was released on the XBox, while many games..including the Grand Theft Auto Series are subtitled, this particular game is not. I played it anyway. I just used whatever cues were on the screen. But I missed out on the main story that unfolds as you play as well as all else. I tried playing it a couple of weeks ago to see how much better it would be. I did note it was improved. I understood bits of dialogue during the cut scenes (sequences that tell the main story with no action requiring your controlling the character.) But the random dialogue from people on the street and those calling for my help were still pretty indistinct to me.

I wasn't daunted by that. Considering that you have for the most part all the sounds you'll hear in any major city out on the street, it's a real life audio simulator. There are cars honking along with the rest of the noise they make. People yelling. Birds chirping. Helicopters flying overhead. It's some heavy listening rehab.

After several weeks of not playing at all, I decided to give it another shot. I didn't have my hopes high...I just figured it would be about the same as before considering I am badly in need of a mapping with things just getting too loose and needing to boost the volume considerably. So I jumped on in to the game and started swinging. I was keeping a fairly low altitude going just above the cars on the street and I heard someone shout "Hey it's Spiderman!" Further down the way I heard someone call "Spidey! Help!" to which I responded. They said "The police are chasing after someone, they might need help!" I also heard a crowd that had gathered while I broke up an assault by two thugs on a pedestrian cheer me on.

Obviously, being able to hear all of these little things, as insignificant as they seem, serves to allow for further immersion in the virtual world. Even if subtitles were present, it's difficult to read them and also pay attention to what you are doing as opposed to passively hearing it. These games are only improving in their quality and ability to capture what it is like to be a super hero. A game based on the movie, Superman Returns will be out this fall for the XBox 360. As with Spiderman, it features a completely rendered city of Metropolis that you must protect by flying around as Superman. So not only do I get to be Superman, but I get to visit a fictitious city (and a pretty nice looking one at that.)



Considering that I work nights with not much of a chance to get out and about during the week, it's a great way to practice listening and understanding speech in difficult situations as well as recognizing all kinds of sounds. Obviously, the option to speech read people in these games does not exist (not yet anyway, mouths open and close but do not form words when speaking.) So I am forced to rely solely on my hearing rather than on old habits.

So that's how I do my listening rehab.

Spiderman, Spiderman,
Does whatever a spider can
Spins a web, any size,
Catches thieves just like flies
Look Out!
Here comes the Spiderman.
Spiderman TV Theme Song - Unknown

After spending a lot of time the last two weeks hooked up to the portable CD player by direct connect, experiencing all kinds of new discoveries in the songs I've heard for years through a hearing aid, I am experiencing some backwards progress. The quality of what I hear with has been gradually eroding. Hi Res is now no longer pleasing to hear through, it's harsh and hissy. MPS is holding up fine as back up..but I am having to turn the volume up more than I had to before. Instead of at 12 o clock, I have it at the 2 o clock position. The overall clarity doesn't seem to be there as I'm having greater trouble with speech discrimination. This is a reversal from actually understanding unfamiliar lyrics within music just by listening over a week ago.

I have heard of others complaining of such phases of not hearing as well and then snapping back. Apparently it's caused by stress, being tired, or even allergies. So what with North Korea throwing an attention getting tantrum, Israel raising Cain upon Lebanon, Iraq never-ending, a shake-up in home life with having someone I'm close to replaced with a roommate I put an ad out for, a heat wave setting off various allergy like symptoms and skin weirdness, and averaging 6 hours of sleep a night instead of 8...I'd say I have all 3 of those causes.

The thing is, we hear with our brain. It is doing more work than it did before by working in conjunction with the components of the ear that delivered the sound information to it before. It has to bridge all of those gaps that the inner ear would serve up to it already prepared for processing. So it's no surprise that quality of hearing goes in peaks and valleys.

Nevertheless, I'll monitor it and report it to my audiologist if it worsens past the point it is at now. It currently resembles the state of my hearing prior to being mapped with Mike Page from AB in attendance. So if it doesn't improve after a bit or worsens, I'll call for an appointment sooner than my next mapping which isn't until the end of August.

Despite that downer for the past few days....it's been a great two weeks, at least in Music listening. I haven't bought a book on CD yet because I realized they are quite expensive....75 dollars on average! I have other things 75 dollars needs to towards. I remembered someone mentioning Libraries carry them, too. So I checked the Long Beach Public Library website, which has their catalog online. Apparently they have the Harry Potter books..but they also have limited hours! They are all closed on Mondays as well as not opening before Noon most days. I'm betting this is a reflection of declining readership.

Now I haven't set foot in a Library in years. This is from someone who'd spent a good portion of his childhood at the Fort Dodge Public Library in Iowa, reading comic books and raiding the shelves for whatever information I could find about anything that came to mind..which I now do from where I sit typing this right now. The internet replaced the library. But for the first 12 years of my life, this place was one of my favorite places in the world.



My mom worked directly across the street from the library at Burch Manufacturing. The Day Care my brother and I would attend while my parents were at work would often have group walks to the Library. We would be walking down the street all holding our partners hand in double-file. My mom would sometimes be at the window waving at us.

The children's library had Ms. Seal, the Librarian. I don't believe that was her real name, just the personality she used. She made coming to the Library fun by reading from books as we sat in a room where they had steps like stadium seating that we sat on. They would also show films on the screen there. Anyway, I admire her job, pretty cool way to spend your days while getting paid for it. She certainly made an impact on me and made it a magical place.

The same years that found me spending time alone at the library with great frequency were accompanied by the onset of my first major drop in hearing. The surgeries I was having required I stay out of school for a time even after returning home from the hospital. Some of that time was spent at the library while my Mom either did her own browsing (my Mom gets just as much credit as Ms. Seal by showing her own interest in the Library) or ran errands in the immediate area. I remember embarrassing her a bit by speaking too loud for the library when she came to pick me up..given that I could not hear myself talk and my sense of volume gone.

The Library provided a sanctuary for me to escape to during those years of descent. At school during recess, I'd go to the school library instead of the playground. The unavoidable isolation I was experiencing was compensated for by immersing myself in a world that gave me reprieve from the strain of maintaining interaction with the rest of the world, a task that was just so much more difficult than it had been with my hearing.

Sadly, that library closed down and was relocated to a brand new facility. They modernized..I give them credit for doing it in style in a town that has been down on it's luck for two decades.



I could use a little magic in my life right now, so it seems fitting that I would have to return to the library to find it again. I'm long overdue in visiting my local library in a city that has been my home for over 3 and a half years now.

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
High Hopes - Pink Floyd

Well it's been 3 weeks since my last mapping. Hi Res P has gotten more time to settle in. I haven't had any issues of any sort during that time. There has been no return of the dizzy spells and all of my maps are equally usable. Hi Res P at 80 IDR is still my main program. I do switch to MPS 80 from time to time, as before, while listening to music. But I am finding I am leaning towards Hi Res P more and more in a natural way without forcing myself to use it. MPS can sound to shut in compared to Hi Res P.

I have not been practicing listening anywhere near as much as I should. Randall's ESL site, quite frankly...is not the most engaging experience. It's like listening to an episode of Mr Rogers Neighborhood...with a quiz to go with it. There is no reason why it can't be more fun. I also realize I need to just plain slow down. I want to wake up that part of my brain that listens with ease. So rather than focusing on listening without visual aid...I'm switching gears to reading along with the audio. It was suggested to me before...I just never really considered the value of doing so until now. Reading along would allow me to focus on all those little speech details.

Currently, my brain still has a habit of filtering out these details out of presumption that they aren't even there..so why bother? Obviously it kicks in...or I wouldn't be able to have phone conversations with family. But it should be on for all listening situations. I should be able to watch TV without captions at all, but I cannot just yet.

I mentioned my speech comprehension scores last time around. I'd be lying if I said I don't feel any pressure to do better next time. I mean....I went from up from 0 percent during the candidacy evaluation testing. Any improvement over that is a blessing. Still....it's not good enough for me. I'd like to see my scores closer to 60-70 percent by the 3rd month for both components.

Most of my free time when not at work or tending to whatever needs tending is spent listening to music. This is running before I walk. The enjoyment is not dependent on my ability to understand the lyrics by listening...I either already know every word or have lyrics up front of me to read along with. The focus is more on taking in as much of the auditory experience as I can. The thing is, I really do need to spend some of that time where the focus is on listening to just someone speaking...the details of their voice...both in the consonants and the quality...tone. It should be engaging.

So I've decided to finally go the books on audio cd route that has long been suggested to me. I can read along with it and focus on the speaker telling the story. Ideally...as I read..I would gradually find I need to read along with it less and less. I already know following along with it is not a problem in the least...but following is no longer the point..it's hearing every little detail in the voice. I'm leaning towards the Harry Potter books...they've been recommended to me repeatedly. I've only seen one of the movies, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." I actually liked it and want to go back and see the previous ones. Except many people say the movies are nowhere near as good as the books. So I want to find out what the deal is there. That should hold my attention. Then there is the "Pocket and the Pendant," suggested by Stephen. He heard it read as a podcast. Apparently it's a newer piece of work influenced by the Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find it as an Audio CD, yet.

I haven't practicing too much on the phone. The way I do it, with the hands-free headset stuck to my headpiece, is not really that ideal. It's hard to hear me with the microphone dangling closer to my ear lobe than my mouth. For the frequency of calls to really pick up, I will need to get my Behind The Ear Processor, which will simplify the whole deal.

I did call my brother and sister-in-law on July 4th, though. That went pretty well. Matt seemed quite excited about it. He kept talking about the fact I was calling him. I shy away from talking about it. I guess I get a little embarrassed..or maybe I'm just avoiding getting too mushy about it. I'm actually supposed to be the guy in the family most in touch with his feelings....but I wind up trying to change the topic to "so what are you up to?" Part of that is also not wanting to get too comfortable and have the call turn into a complete bust..fall flat on my face. So I'm like "let's not wave the flag yet."

There was a different kind of success with this call. Matt had been holding the phone too close to his mouth, so I could hear him breathing into it while also his voice just being too sharp and loud. Once I recognized that, I asked him to move the receiver away from his mouth. This made a big difference in how easy it was to understand him. The "ice" was broken though. I believe the next step is really to make these phone conversations more frequent and routine. IMs served us well...but they really don't bring you together the same way. You are still looking at a screen with words. There is nothing like actually hearing the voice of the people you love and care about.

Talking to Nichole was an experience. It has always been difficult for me to understand my sister-in law. I would find myself looking to Matt to clarify her words. Her lips would get hard to read. On the phone, it was actually easier to understand her than my Brother. It was then she gave me the news of my 6 month + old nephew, Will, possibly signing his first word: Milk. She said she isn't totally sure just yet though.

For clarification, Will is hearing. His parents decided to teach him Sign Language as a way to give him an early communication method. They have been taking him to classes. I am personally convinced it's one of the best things anyone can do for their child. My own signing is rudimentary at best....the equivalent of speaking in broken English. It's going to come in quite handy though. My nephew does not see me all that much given I live in Southern CA while they live up in Bend, Oregon. So I'll have to make an impression on him. Having an adult other than his parents or in the classroom sign to him should make for a bonding experience. I'll see him this Christmas (his birthday is two days later) so by then he should be signing plenty along with getting to hear his first words!

The latest development in music-listening is I finally went and picked up a patch cord this weekend so I could plug my cheap Walkman CD player directly into my processor. I had to get an adapter jack to convert it from stereo to mono. This means both the left and right feeds are coming in to the processor so I hear both. It's actually quite enjoyable. I have to burn CDs rather than just play them right off my computer, but it will do for now. If you think about it, I am literally plugging the CD player directly into my brain. This is the equivalent of an addict getting his fix intravenously.

Things have changed from the days of sitting up in the early morning hours with a pair of big headphones blasting into my right ear with people in the next room being able to hear it. There is nothing to be heard by anyone outside no matter how loud I blast it. Incidentally, the volume on the CD player is kept between Zero and One (goes up to 10.) So I'm at the other end as far as volume needs go.

Eventually I will invest in an Ipod or Zen player. I'll always go to the store to buy CDs as long as they will let me (music downloads, such as those at Itunes, are increasing and sales of actual CDs plummeting) but either player will let me play my existing mp3s. It would be like carrying the same library that is on my computer around anywhere I go. Because they are battery powered, there is no risk of damage to my CI.

Music has been a process...those taking their own journeys should keep that in mind and not be discouraged if it doesn't sound like it should. The key is to focus on listening for what you do recognize and go with that. Keep trying. There were plenty of times I would shut the music down with a "blegh, that sounds like shit." I just couldn't take it anymore, but it gets better all the time. Two weeks ago, I was concerned that I wasn't benefiting from the increased information provided by Hi Res. I was still favoring MPS for music and I found that I could only listen to music for so long before it just didn't seem to come together as it had just 30 minutes prior. This left me worried that Hi Res 120, when released later this year..would not work for me as it should. After all, MPS uses only 8 electrodes instead of Hi Res' 16 electrodes. It's like they keep telling you though....you have to let it settle in. MPS is actually sounding less resonant than Hi Res P does, a reversal from how it was before. Hi Res P really doesn't have all that much pitch distortion. I'm able to go for longer and longer periods without the sound quality decreasing.

The pitch is still what I would call...faded. I am not about to take up a "name that pitch" challenge or start playing songs by ear on my guitar, but everything is gradually sounding more and more as it should. I do hear the limitations that I read about when researching the technical side of CIs prior to getting my implant. The more that is happening at once in the music..the more difficult it is to hear all of those layers clearly. For example...a lone acoustic guitar and a single singer can sound quite natural and true to form easily enough. I could close my eyes and get the sense they are in the same room with me. But then add in keyboards, bass guitar, a 2nd guitarist, singers vocalizing, drums, a sax player....Each with their own timbre and contribution to the whole of the songs...that's alot of information for 16 channels to process.

Yet, Hi Res does a very good job of working with those 16 Channels. With my hearing aid, I would often get "lost" while reading the lyrics along with what I was listening to. There were songs that I didn't even bother with because I couldn't pick out the vocals. Music that was boomy and bassy generally was the worst...because that is what my hearing was most able to hear. The less easily heard details would get buried under the what was just too over emphasized by my hearing condition. For 19 years, though I would read it in the lyrics, I never heard Jon Bon Jovi say "Once upon a time, not so long ago" at the beginning of "Living On A Prayer." That detail is now easily heard. There are entire albums that for the most part proved too difficult for me to listen to that are now effortless, both the music and the vocals. In the past, it would be easy for something like the singer throwing in an "Ohhhhh" and it would throw me off if it wasn't printed in the lyrics. I'd start trying to match up the next word in the lyrics with it instead..which would screw me up. Now, rather than my trying to play "match the lyrics up with where they are in the music," that process is practically effortless.

Even with the existing enjoyment I have hearing with Hi Res, Advanced Bionics users have 120 Channels to look forward to. This is what will give those "faded pitches" more vividness. Those layers of instruments will have more channels to deliver the information through. I believe the aim in the end is for 1500 channels in order to most accurately deliver the sound information, but I enjoy it with 16 channels as it is. 104 extra channels could possibly be orgasmic.


I know just where you come from
Where all your yesterday's are gone...
And now you're done
But you've only just begun
It's time you opened up the door...

And now it's all very clear
This journey of a thousand years

Can you feel it coming?
Can you feel it now?
Can you feel it coming?
Or is it the roar of the crowd?
Journey of 1000 Years - KISS