First, let me say that it would really make a difference if I could write this stuff out in the late afternoon/early evening. But that is when I head off to work. By the time I get home at 3:30 AM or later...generally any flow I had going earlier that I wanted to get out has gone to bed for the night. So I often find myself stumbling to get something out so as to not fall behind....the result just isn't worth the effort when it's like that.
The other problem is when so much unfolds in a short span of time that I have no idea how to even begin..... So far the successes have been gradual over the course of the last month and 4 Days. The bumps along the way, although minor...are enough to also temper having too much enthusiasm. You get all excited over a development in your hearing and then something goes wrong...like dizziness or dissipating sound quality. It's like "Yay! oh wait...shit, that's not good."
But then the breakthroughs come of nowhere and justify it all....
This past Saturday night, I went to bed thinking about my Sidekick phone.. trying to figure out a way I could use it. The Aux Mic (an accessory that comes with the Processor for pinning to your shirt or sound source for better pick-up of the sound source) I had tried earlier by plugging it in to my processor and holding the mic up to the cell's incoming speaker did not work because it picked up the interference from the cell. In fact, I had taken to using the Aux Mic by placing it near one of the computer speakers while listening to music at night at a low volume..but putting the sound right in my ear from my perspective. My cell usually sits on my desk charging at that time. At one point while sitting at my desk I heard this bizarre electronic, yet erratic pulse. Of course, being me, I thought....Oh lord, the internal device is popping out into failure. But then later I tried the Aux Mic with the Cell and heard the exact same sound. So no dramatics played out there.
Holding the phone up to the headpiece doesn't work. It puts it too far from my mouth, plus the headpiece and phone wind up sticking together because of the magnets in both. I didn't particularly care for using the speaker phone on it because of the lack of privacy. Then I remembered the hands-free ear bud cord that came with the cell, sitting in my desk still in it's packaging. I had no way to use it with the hearing aid other than holding it up to my hearing aid's microphone, which defeated the purpose of it being hands free...and I couldn't really understand anyone anyway. The last time I talked on the phone with any degree of actual comprehension, usually with much repeating involved or just plain moving it along to another topic, was in the mid-90s with my Mom or Stacy. Anyone else was nothing but a visit to the land of unhealthy stress. I've stuck with just Relay through the Internet for the last 2 years, which is total typing. My personal communications were done via instant messenger.
Anyway...the thing with the hands-free ear bud is it is a tiny speaker....meaning it would stick to my headpiece and hang there...just as it's supposed to. The only issue is it's a bit higher than it should be so the mic on it is not quite where it needs to be in front of my mouth so I have to speak up enough for voice to carry to it.
So in the afternoon, which is my morning, when I woke up on Sunday...I went to the desk drawer and got the hands-free out. Sure enough, it stuck to the headpiece. I plugged it in to the cell and called up my voice mail to test it out. The sound came in clearly. I have to sit in the kitchen when making calls since it's the only place in the house with decent reception. It's not exactly the most quiet though.
Being it was Father's Day, I just jumped in and dialed up my Parents number. I figured that I could at least do what I had in the past...do the talking while they listen. The refrigerator was humming, blinds were banging against the windows from the breeze blowing in, a jet was flying overhead, and the connection was so-so. My Mom answered and seemed a bit surprised that it was me. She said it was good to hear my voice. As I listened to her speak, I was in disbelief, yet approached it very matter of factly, as if this was something I did everyday..just picked up the phone and called someone. My mom's voice was VERY clear. I wasn't even having to try. I just had to listen. I told her I was calling to wish Dad a Happy Fathers Day. She said she had figured. Then she went to get my Dad on the phone.
I had thought I would understand my Mom some, just not to that degree. My Dad...it was always uncomfortable on the phone with him because I could never understand him. Most of the time if he answered the phone in the past when I called, it would boil down to my asking if Mom was there and he would get her. Sometimes we'd try to have a conversation..but it was really an exercise in futility. But then my Dad said hello. What ensued was the first actual free-flowing, back and forth conversation with each other over the phone in over 25 years. I understood everything my Dad said. So much for me doing the talking and him doing the listening. At first he kept his responses short, but when I started responding to him appropriately, even where it would have been hard to just guess at what he was saying as I had in the past, he started to talk more and I just kept on answering. By the end he was praising the implant. I wished him a Happy Fathers Day and told him I love him and we hung up.
So that is how the phone re-entered my life one month post-activation. I've taken to carrying the hands-free with me anywhere I go now. I've found that I can actually understand the entire voice mail menu as well as listen to messages and get the gist of what it's about and who it is from. I believe I may very well be done with having Relay go into my voice mail and take 5 minutes to type out a 5 second message. I may have to expand my plan minutes seeing as I'll actually be using the phone service, not just the internet, email, and instant message services. I really did not believe I'd be able to do this one month post activation but there you go! I will need to do some practice runs before I start making more difficult calls to others I'd like to call up, such as my Grandma.
The call to my parents was done using MPS. Hi Res P was still not yielding the results I would expect. This past Monday was my one-month post activation mapping. Mike Page (great guy! very pleasant and I enjoyed having him there.) from Advanced Bionics was in attendence to do the integrity check on the internal device as well as work with Dawna on doing the mapping. Before we got started, I told them about the previous day's break through. Mike shook his head in amazement.
The integrity check showed that everything is fine, but the impedance issue arose again. They found that electrode 1 was particularly problematic. There was a series of tests done so I really can't keep them all straight. The bottom line was that they decided to turn electrode 1 off, which is at the end of the array where the lower frequencies are. The thinking was the impedance at electrode 1 was affecting the overall sound quality.
So electrode 1 was turned off and Hi Res P was remapped using a combination of setting the T and M levels and setting it "live." That means I listened with the implant turned on giving feedback on the quality/clarity of her voice while she changed the levels. The pulse width of Hi Res was also widened.
The end result was night and day compared to the last two attempts to put Hi Res on my processor. Mike had been speaking to Dawna as he looked over her shoulder while she did the mapping. He was speaking in a low voice, yet I was picking it up very easily and clearly in a way that was not possible with MPS. Hi Res P was sounding like it should. I left the office with the same programs, but with all of them working as they should: Hi Res P at 80 and 70 IDR with MPS at 80. Electrode 1 may be turned back on down the road after the impedance issue works itself out, as it apparently does as seen in others.
Hi Res held up outside of the office. I played the car stereo all the way back home and was able to enjoy the input through Hi Res. This had not been possible previously. The overall quality was holding up and I was using the 80 IDR! So whatever they did in the office actually worked.
The end of the appointment had Dawna doing the full range of tests in the booth. My open set speech scores, while I do not remember the exact results, came out pretty good considering they were at 0% during the evaluation phase pre-implantation. Dawna commented that my score results are typical of the 3rd month post implantation mark, so the fact that these were showing one month in was very good. I believe the open set sentences were at around 50% and the single syllable words were at 30%.
That evening while at work during my lunch, I made a call to Stephen using Hi Res P. I was actually eating and listening to him over the hum of the industrial refrigerator in the lunch room. It went pretty well aside from the fact there were drop outs in the connection.
Ideally, I should be in a completely quiet location with a strong connection when doing these intial calls, but the real world just isn't like that...so I've not bothered. I compare it to learning to drive using a manual transmission..which is actually what I did using a beat up 1970's green Subaru. If I can handle it under difficult circumstances, then that only makes it that much easier in ideal circumstances.
Hi Res P has become my main map. The ease of clarity is incomparable to MPS. I do switch to MPS sometimes while listening to music, but for the most part I've stuck to Hi Res P. By the end of the day on Monday, my brain began to protest. I had hoped to do an update then while listening to music, however that whining tinnitus that popped up at the House of Blues last year reared it's head. I took it in stride, figuring that the end of day syndrome of the brain being tired as reported by so many others had arisen. Hi Res is finally having a chance to really settle in and I'm sure it's taxing on the brain even while I personally still have an appetite for more sound.
My next mapping is not until August, so I am more than thrilled to have been given maps that actually work as they should! If I was able to make those phone calls after a month of switching between strategies that weren't quite ideal...imagine my progress 2 months from now using one strategy!
Been there, done that and I ain't lookin' back
on the seeds I have sown
Saving dimes
Spending too much time on the telephone
Who says you can't go home.
Who Says You Can't Go Home - Bon Jovi
The other problem is when so much unfolds in a short span of time that I have no idea how to even begin..... So far the successes have been gradual over the course of the last month and 4 Days. The bumps along the way, although minor...are enough to also temper having too much enthusiasm. You get all excited over a development in your hearing and then something goes wrong...like dizziness or dissipating sound quality. It's like "Yay! oh wait...shit, that's not good."
But then the breakthroughs come of nowhere and justify it all....
This past Saturday night, I went to bed thinking about my Sidekick phone.. trying to figure out a way I could use it. The Aux Mic (an accessory that comes with the Processor for pinning to your shirt or sound source for better pick-up of the sound source) I had tried earlier by plugging it in to my processor and holding the mic up to the cell's incoming speaker did not work because it picked up the interference from the cell. In fact, I had taken to using the Aux Mic by placing it near one of the computer speakers while listening to music at night at a low volume..but putting the sound right in my ear from my perspective. My cell usually sits on my desk charging at that time. At one point while sitting at my desk I heard this bizarre electronic, yet erratic pulse. Of course, being me, I thought....Oh lord, the internal device is popping out into failure. But then later I tried the Aux Mic with the Cell and heard the exact same sound. So no dramatics played out there.
Holding the phone up to the headpiece doesn't work. It puts it too far from my mouth, plus the headpiece and phone wind up sticking together because of the magnets in both. I didn't particularly care for using the speaker phone on it because of the lack of privacy. Then I remembered the hands-free ear bud cord that came with the cell, sitting in my desk still in it's packaging. I had no way to use it with the hearing aid other than holding it up to my hearing aid's microphone, which defeated the purpose of it being hands free...and I couldn't really understand anyone anyway. The last time I talked on the phone with any degree of actual comprehension, usually with much repeating involved or just plain moving it along to another topic, was in the mid-90s with my Mom or Stacy. Anyone else was nothing but a visit to the land of unhealthy stress. I've stuck with just Relay through the Internet for the last 2 years, which is total typing. My personal communications were done via instant messenger.
Anyway...the thing with the hands-free ear bud is it is a tiny speaker....meaning it would stick to my headpiece and hang there...just as it's supposed to. The only issue is it's a bit higher than it should be so the mic on it is not quite where it needs to be in front of my mouth so I have to speak up enough for voice to carry to it.
So in the afternoon, which is my morning, when I woke up on Sunday...I went to the desk drawer and got the hands-free out. Sure enough, it stuck to the headpiece. I plugged it in to the cell and called up my voice mail to test it out. The sound came in clearly. I have to sit in the kitchen when making calls since it's the only place in the house with decent reception. It's not exactly the most quiet though.
Being it was Father's Day, I just jumped in and dialed up my Parents number. I figured that I could at least do what I had in the past...do the talking while they listen. The refrigerator was humming, blinds were banging against the windows from the breeze blowing in, a jet was flying overhead, and the connection was so-so. My Mom answered and seemed a bit surprised that it was me. She said it was good to hear my voice. As I listened to her speak, I was in disbelief, yet approached it very matter of factly, as if this was something I did everyday..just picked up the phone and called someone. My mom's voice was VERY clear. I wasn't even having to try. I just had to listen. I told her I was calling to wish Dad a Happy Fathers Day. She said she had figured. Then she went to get my Dad on the phone.
I had thought I would understand my Mom some, just not to that degree. My Dad...it was always uncomfortable on the phone with him because I could never understand him. Most of the time if he answered the phone in the past when I called, it would boil down to my asking if Mom was there and he would get her. Sometimes we'd try to have a conversation..but it was really an exercise in futility. But then my Dad said hello. What ensued was the first actual free-flowing, back and forth conversation with each other over the phone in over 25 years. I understood everything my Dad said. So much for me doing the talking and him doing the listening. At first he kept his responses short, but when I started responding to him appropriately, even where it would have been hard to just guess at what he was saying as I had in the past, he started to talk more and I just kept on answering. By the end he was praising the implant. I wished him a Happy Fathers Day and told him I love him and we hung up.
So that is how the phone re-entered my life one month post-activation. I've taken to carrying the hands-free with me anywhere I go now. I've found that I can actually understand the entire voice mail menu as well as listen to messages and get the gist of what it's about and who it is from. I believe I may very well be done with having Relay go into my voice mail and take 5 minutes to type out a 5 second message. I may have to expand my plan minutes seeing as I'll actually be using the phone service, not just the internet, email, and instant message services. I really did not believe I'd be able to do this one month post activation but there you go! I will need to do some practice runs before I start making more difficult calls to others I'd like to call up, such as my Grandma.
The call to my parents was done using MPS. Hi Res P was still not yielding the results I would expect. This past Monday was my one-month post activation mapping. Mike Page (great guy! very pleasant and I enjoyed having him there.) from Advanced Bionics was in attendence to do the integrity check on the internal device as well as work with Dawna on doing the mapping. Before we got started, I told them about the previous day's break through. Mike shook his head in amazement.
The integrity check showed that everything is fine, but the impedance issue arose again. They found that electrode 1 was particularly problematic. There was a series of tests done so I really can't keep them all straight. The bottom line was that they decided to turn electrode 1 off, which is at the end of the array where the lower frequencies are. The thinking was the impedance at electrode 1 was affecting the overall sound quality.
So electrode 1 was turned off and Hi Res P was remapped using a combination of setting the T and M levels and setting it "live." That means I listened with the implant turned on giving feedback on the quality/clarity of her voice while she changed the levels. The pulse width of Hi Res was also widened.
The end result was night and day compared to the last two attempts to put Hi Res on my processor. Mike had been speaking to Dawna as he looked over her shoulder while she did the mapping. He was speaking in a low voice, yet I was picking it up very easily and clearly in a way that was not possible with MPS. Hi Res P was sounding like it should. I left the office with the same programs, but with all of them working as they should: Hi Res P at 80 and 70 IDR with MPS at 80. Electrode 1 may be turned back on down the road after the impedance issue works itself out, as it apparently does as seen in others.
Hi Res held up outside of the office. I played the car stereo all the way back home and was able to enjoy the input through Hi Res. This had not been possible previously. The overall quality was holding up and I was using the 80 IDR! So whatever they did in the office actually worked.
The end of the appointment had Dawna doing the full range of tests in the booth. My open set speech scores, while I do not remember the exact results, came out pretty good considering they were at 0% during the evaluation phase pre-implantation. Dawna commented that my score results are typical of the 3rd month post implantation mark, so the fact that these were showing one month in was very good. I believe the open set sentences were at around 50% and the single syllable words were at 30%.
That evening while at work during my lunch, I made a call to Stephen using Hi Res P. I was actually eating and listening to him over the hum of the industrial refrigerator in the lunch room. It went pretty well aside from the fact there were drop outs in the connection.
Ideally, I should be in a completely quiet location with a strong connection when doing these intial calls, but the real world just isn't like that...so I've not bothered. I compare it to learning to drive using a manual transmission..which is actually what I did using a beat up 1970's green Subaru. If I can handle it under difficult circumstances, then that only makes it that much easier in ideal circumstances.
Hi Res P has become my main map. The ease of clarity is incomparable to MPS. I do switch to MPS sometimes while listening to music, but for the most part I've stuck to Hi Res P. By the end of the day on Monday, my brain began to protest. I had hoped to do an update then while listening to music, however that whining tinnitus that popped up at the House of Blues last year reared it's head. I took it in stride, figuring that the end of day syndrome of the brain being tired as reported by so many others had arisen. Hi Res is finally having a chance to really settle in and I'm sure it's taxing on the brain even while I personally still have an appetite for more sound.
My next mapping is not until August, so I am more than thrilled to have been given maps that actually work as they should! If I was able to make those phone calls after a month of switching between strategies that weren't quite ideal...imagine my progress 2 months from now using one strategy!
Been there, done that and I ain't lookin' back
on the seeds I have sown
Saving dimes
Spending too much time on the telephone
Who says you can't go home.
Who Says You Can't Go Home - Bon Jovi
posted by David R at 4:00 AM
4 Comments:
I love reading your posts....you give me HOPE!
I was always able to talk on the phone with my HA, but it was always stressful, since I had to work so hard at it. I can't imagine a mostly stress-free phone call, especially with background noise! Whoa! Incredible!! I know everyone's progress is different, but I can still hope that mine will be like yours. I can't help but think that attitude plays a big part...that you believe the end result is worth whatever you have to go through now :)
My evaluations are one week from today...I have waited since April 3rd for them! I can hardly wait!
HI!
I hope I can use the phone in a month. Good for you!
Hi I'm waiting for my CI surgery to be approved by my health insurance. My husband already has a CI. You've got a cool site - I bookmarked it!
SO how are you doing these days?
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