The weather we're having this weekend is a repeat of spring break's weather.  Rain, snow, sun, or hail.  The last two days I counted four hailstorms, and this picture was taken just about two hours ago.  Right now it's sunny.  You just never know!  Simon and I got caught in one hailstorm walking around in downtown Salem, but we didn't mind at all.  I even thought that I heard the crunch of the stones as I was stepping on them before the traffic rushed by.  Today I went outside during today's hailstorm as I wanted to see, feel and listen to it.  I noticed that hail sounds different than rain--it has a crispier sound I guess would be a good way to describe it.

Between spring break and this weekend, we did have some gorgeous warm sunny weather that reached up to 80 degrees!   I was outside a lot during those days and had fun listening to the birds also enjoying the beautiful weather.  My dad told me one time that some people can hear a bird and know what kind it is by the way it sounds.  I've always been intrigued by that.  Well I noticed what sounded to me different kinds of bird sounds, and I'm not talking about the annoying crow sounds either.  I know that I have a crazy imagination, but at one point, I was thinking that I heard three different birds having a conversation with one bird having a higher pitch so I'm assuming that one was a female.  I was imagining that all three birds were the same species, but that one male had a slightly different tempo.  Crazy, huh?

The sounds you hear when playing Wii sports are so realistic!  (For those of you who don't know what a Wii is, it's a game console that you can play video games on.)   I really enjoy playing the Wii sports games because you actually move similar to how you would move playing the real games.  For example in Wii tennis, while serving, you swing the remote up in the air and move it forward to "hit" the ball.  My favorites are bowling and tennis.   In bowling, you actually hear the ball hit the pins just like it's really happening.  You also hear the "crowd of people" especially when you get a strike!  In tennis you actually hear the ball go through the air!  I'm not a fan of playing the other "normal" video games, but I'm amazed on how much detail I can hear while the boys are playing them and how I can hear them from another room.

As you can see, I've been paying a lot of attention to the sounds in my environment.

Rachel just emailed me asking for an update on my progress with my CI so I told her that I would just make a blog entry!

I downloaded the audio versions of my favorite poems from my childhood, Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken and Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.  I was able to follow along with those poems with just my CI and no words, but that was mainly because I have memorized the words.   However if I start somewhere in the middle of the poem, I don't always get my place.  I do pick up on words here and there while I'm trying to figure it out though!  For a little extra challenge I also downloaded Dr. Seuss' Oh, The Thinks You Can Think! 



I've been listening to this book a dozen times or so the past two days and have gotten to the point where I can pick out phrases especially the title phrase.  I certainly haven't memorized this whole book (although it won't be long before I do), so this challenge is about right for me now.   Since I'm on spring break, I don't have an excuse not to do this "training" regularly for the next few days and see what happens.  I really want to see what I can do by listening without looking at the words.  Starting with a poem or very short story that I'm familiar with makes it easier for me to pick out words/phrases rather than just picking out a novel and expect to get anything out of it.  I probably should move on to other familiar Dr. Seuss books.  Leave a comment and let me know what your favorite Dr. Seuss book is!

I know these pictures have nothing to do with my cochlear implant journey, but I just couldn't resist including them here!  These are pictures of my cousin Ben's new puppy named Maya enjoying the snow that Ohio has so much of now.

Pictures taken today!


Dowe's place in Ohio


my place in Oregon

What a contrast between the two pictures taken on the same day.  My brother sent the snow picture--his county is on a level 3 snow emergency meaning that all roads are closed to non-emergency personnel.  Meanwhile I have been enjoying the nice weather outside and took several walks throughout the day in our forest.   Lots of tiny wildflowers were on the trails  (see picture above), but I don't know the name of that particular variety.  I did see one daffodil blooming!  I enjoyed hearing the frogs by the pond.  It was neat being able to hear them so loudly from a distance.  Spring is in the air out here!  (Not to make any of you Ohio folks jealous or anything!)

As I was thinking about the contrast between my two ears, at first I was thinking that my two ears are still at very different levels.  After thinking about it, I realize that really my two ears are much more alike now than it has ever has been before my surgery.  I can hear many sounds with my ears, either separately or together.  I can actually hear more sounds with my implanted ear in comparison with my hearing aid ear.  Speech is still much more clearer with my hearing aid ear, but I am optimistic that will balance out eventually.   I haven't been working too hard these days on my auditory therapy, but I finally figured out a way that I can work on that without a big time investment.  Instead of listening and reading along with the corresponding book, I also just listen without the book.  While I am not picking out what is being said, I do pick up some words if I am focused.  This way I can be doing other things while listening instead of being tied to a book and give my brain more stimulation from my implanted ear.  Right now I am listening to The World of Winnie-the-Pooh.  I can easily tell when there are sound effects or when the narrator is reading.  When I first got turned on last summer, I couldn't do that--words and sound effects all sounded the same.  While listening without the book, the words sound pretty natural now--I just can't quite make them out yet!  Sometimes I feel like my brain is similar to that of Winnie-the-Pooh!

During my walk today through the woods, I enjoyed hearing a variety of sounds.  Here's a picture that I took today that represents one of my favorite sounds:



The waterfall sure was loud!  It was fun listening to the many creeks we have running, some of which lead to this waterfall.  The water sounds better with both of my ears.  I did notice that the sounds of the crunch of the leaves and the popping of the puff balls (you know those things that fall from oak trees) were the same with just my CI as it is with both of my ears.  It was also neat hearing the birds--I believe I heard two different kinds.  Don't ask me what kind they were though!!  One sound that I did NOT hear was the sound of my cell phone falling from my pocket of my hoodie.  When I realized that it was missing, I thought about retracing my steps.  More than a mile up and down the hills.  And the trails are completely covered with leaves and stuff.  I thought about getting my other phone and calling my cell to see if I can hear it, but I remembered that I had left my cell on vibrate.  Then I calmed down and thought about where I might have lost that phone.   There was one place where I was pulling myself up to climb over three fallen trees to try to find the creek that I was hearing that I couldn't locate.  This place was close to home, so I anxiously walked back there to see if I could locate my phone.  Sure enough it was there, on the ground beneath the fallen trees!!  YAY!!!

Okay on to the indoor sounds.  These are new sounds that I have noted over the past month or so that I thought was cool:

knife slicing through an onion (it makes a squishing sound!!)
oatmeal shifting while measuring it for making cookies (wow, I had no idea that could make a noise!)
hearing myself swallowing--this is more noticeable when I am wearing just my CI (I wonder why?)
plucking my eyebrows--I'm not sure about this one and didn't have too many hairs that I wanted to pluck to really test this.  Is this a sound that you can hear??

Okay, enough for tonight.  You all have a great week!

Have any of you seen the game show from a looong time ago called Name that Tune?  The format of the show consisted of a pair of contestants who challenged each other to name tunes with a fewer number of notes than the other one.  I remember being awed that on occasion someone would be able to correctly name the song with only one note (without words)!  Well I was reminded of this game show while I was listening to songs in the shuffle mode while jumping on my mini trampoline when I knew after one note what one of the songs was.  That song was Hey Jude sung by the Beatles (of course).  I did have the benefit of hearing the first word with the note—I would have never guessed it without hearing the word with the note, but hey, I thought it was kind of cool to be able to recognize a song that quickly!

Actually, out of my 700+ (and growing) songs downloaded to my Zune (Microsoft version of the iPod), I can sometimes recognize the exact song after say several notes.  That’s pretty rare though.  More likely (only sometimes) I will know at least who the artist is even before the words have started.  It’s neat that I can sometimes recognize patterns and rhythms of notes from different artists/songs.  Over the past two weeks I have been listening to a larger variety of singers/bands thanks to the Zune Marketplace with their song samples and Pandora.com.  From that I pick out my favorites and buy their CDs (most of them used) online.  I’ve already started getting them in the mail and downloading them into my Zune.  So now you know how I’m spending my Christmas money—thanks Mom and Dad!

I’m wearing my cochlear implant whenever I’m wearing my hearing aid and am very happy to have that privilege.  By the way, when listening to music, I much prefer to wear both.  If you measure my progress by how well I understand speech with my CI alone, then my progress would be considered very slow.  Only twice can I remember understanding something without looking when wearing my CI alone.  Both of those phrases came from Simon, and one of the phrases was, “May I have some chocolate?”  The other phrase was “not right now” when I asked Simon to do something while he was playing a video game.  Both of those phrases sounded very clear to me, but both must have been a fluke.  I have been continuing to listen to books on tape with my CI alone along with the book.  The reality is though that most of the time I also wear my hearing aid, so haven’t given my CI much of a chance to work alone.  But when I consider that I've gone all these years hearing nothing with my left ear and now can distinguish among environmental sounds with just my left ear, I've come a long way that I've never dreamed possible.

Here's a picture of my Zune and my "earbuds" called Music Link from TecEar.  (My picture got added to that website after the CEO read my blog!  He asked for my permission which I gave!)

This past week I was good in doing more listening practice by reading along with just my left CI ear for a total of three hours.  I only lost my place once and that was because I was at a interesting part in the book and forgot what I was doing and read way ahead.  Still haven't finished the book yet as it takes longer to listen than it does to only read.  I need to figure out how to make my auditory practice more challenging without making it too much harder.  Still can't make out the words without having the book to follow.  In any case I plan to continue to do lots of listening to books, as I'm sure that's very good for my auditory brain development.

I've been noticing that I can hear people's conversations from a distance and even sometimes understand what they're saying!  It's weird when I'm walking down the hallway and know that people are talking when I can't even see them.  This is when I'm wearing both of my "ears" walking d!!own the hallways at various schools that I go to.  A few days ago when I stopped at La Roca, a burrito stand right on the main drag in Philomath, someone struck up a conversation with me while we were waiting for our orders.  Turns out this guy was a log truck driver, and that he was also heading towards Newport.  After giving him a bad time about the powerful engines of log trucks, we started talking about the prices of various species of logs.  I need to look into growing some alder trees in our woods!  Anyway, we were talking outside in windy conditions and lots of traffic was going by, and it occurred to me as I was eating my lunch in my car that I had an easy time conversing in spite of what would typically be a difficult listening situation for me.  I think that having two ears is a definite advantage in that I can hear farther away and can tune out background noises better.

Bonnie, thanks for following my blog and leaving comments and questions!  You asked when I'll know if I reach my limit in what I can hear with my CI.  There are a few ways to answer that question!  I'm hoping my brain will continue to develop auditorally throughout the next year or two so that I can at least have as good speech discrimination with my CI alone as I do with my hearing aid ear and then eventually surpassing even that.  It would be great to achieve 100% speech understanding!!!  With my right hearing aid ear alone, I get about 50% speech understanding (without lipreading) at 45dB which is the typical volume of speech.  My hearing aid cannot amplify the high frequency sounds as I don't have amplifiable (is that a word?) hearing at 3000Hz or higher which is why I can't hear sounds like s, sh, z, th, f, etc.  I'm hoping that eventually I will be able to distinguish among those sounds with my CI which would enable me to achieve a better speech discrimination score.  Also another thing to consider is that the software in my CI processor is continually upgradeable, so that the potential to do better always exists.  I've already gone through one software upgrade!  So to answer your question, I may never reach my limit!!!

If you haven't fallen asleep reading this yet, this might do it.  I discovered a few nights ago that I can now sleep comfortably on my CI side for a long time.  Of course, right after my surgery (oh, I just realized that it was exactly four months ago!), I couldn't bring myself to sleep on that side.  Then after two months or so I was able to do it for a short time after I put a "dent" in my pillow to leave a space for my sensitive area.  Well now I don't even have to do that!  The implant that's under my skin by my skull does stick out a little--you can feel it if you were to feel my head--so I never thought that I would get comfortable sleeping on it.  I'm happy that I can now as I like sleeping on both sides to even things out! 

Good night!

I managed to do some auditory training with my CI alone this weekend even with attending a conference in Eugene on Friday and Saturday.  Fortunately Debbie and I were able to get out of town right before the U of O homecoming game ended yesterday! 

I enjoyed most of the sessions I attended at the conference.  One presenter, Carol Flexer, is a well-known pediatric audiologist who gave a very compelling talk about how we need to look at providing auditory/language experiences for our students from a new perspective considering the technological advances that have been made for people with hearing losses.  One of Carol’s comments that was of personal interest to me is that there are studies being done analyzing the advantages of wearing a cochlear implant and a hearing aid.  Preliminary findings show that wearing one of each makes for better music appreciation.  Makes sense to me considering that cochlear implants don’t go below 250 Hz (middle C).  For you techies, here’s an article that explains this limitation of CIs. 

Another session I attended discussed a very new (to me) concept of transposition hearing aids for people with sloping hearing losses (good hearing in low frequencies that slope sharply to very poor hearing in the higher frequencies).  Apparently there’s a way to “transpose” hearing in the lower frequencies and use that to amplify the higher frequencies.  I’m flabbergasted on how that can be done.  It doesn’t sound like that I have enough hearing in the low frequencies to benefit from this technology, but who knows, perhaps at some point I will.

I'll get to the reason for my title of today's entry.  Today I wore just my CI for the most part.  The things that I did today that made interesting sounds to me are:  clipping my fingernails and toenails, dicing celery (sounded crunchy like you were eating them!), and throwing things in the garbage.  I did wear my hearing aid too when Simon was playing his tuba and heard a funny sound—water sloshing in the tuba while a very bad sounding note was being played!  As soon as I heard that I knew right away why it sounded that way, and my suspicion was confirmed when Simon emptied the water out right afterwards.

Today I did some “formal” auditory training.  I listened (reading along with the book) to two chapters of a romance novel that I had loaded on my MP3 player and only had to find my place with the help of my hearing aid once!  The narrator was very easy to follow.  I decided to go with an easier-to-read novel as the other two books that I was reading required too much thought in order to process the information.  I’ll try to do my listening exercises more consistently by doing at least one chapter a day…

Thanks to those of you that mentioned my broken links that were throughout my blog.  I went back and fixed them all.

After I posted the picture of my batteries charging in my last entry, I had two people ask about the size of the batteries.  I guess it was hard to tell by the picture!  My mom called saying that the batteries looked big, and Bonnie wrote a comment in my blog entry asking about the same thing.  (Thanks Bonnie for your comments--I enjoy getting them!)  Hopefully this picture will give a better idea of the sizes of my CI stuff.  That's a quarter in the picture, and the lime green paper is a half sheet.

I have been mostly wearing both of my "ears" since I've been working, so I haven't had much practice with wearing just my CI alone.  I really do need to make a point of doing auditory exercises with just my CI.  I was reading some emails from the CI list serves and noticed that some people called it cheating when they wear their hearing aid along with their CI at the beginning part of their CI journey.  Cheating, or not, at this point, while working, it's a necessity for me to wear both.  Communication is a big part of my job, so...  I have noticed at meetings, it's already helping for me to have both, as I can immediately tell when a person on my left is talking (even at a quiet voice) when I'm not looking.  I can tell if the sound is coming into my CI (left) or into my hearing aid (right).  It's so cool not to have to constantly scan the group to see who's talking!!

Nancy sent me a really interesting article about how the brains of people wearing CIs react to auditory stimuli of language.  Images of brain activity were taken from those who have good auditory language skills and compared with images of those who does not have good auditory skills.  I look forward to reading the article more thoroughly--thanks so much Nancy! 

This shows all four of my CI batteries charging up last night.  As you can see I have two each of two different sizes.  The smaller one lasts about 15 hours so I can go most of the day on one battery.  The larger battery lasts over two days.  I know that this isn't too terribly exciting, but hey, I don't have much to report.

Since I have started working again, I haven't done much auditory training like listening to books on tape.  Since I need to have the actual book to follow along, I can't listen to books while I'm driving.  Too bad, as I spent a lot of time on the road.  I've been listening to music CDs though!

I have been wearing both ears these past few weeks.  I still get a kick out of hearing out of my CI side when my hearing aid doesn't pick up anything.  I have been noticing that when I am further away from the sound source.  So my CI is picking up on the higher pitch sounds and the softer sounds. 

Today, I was listening to my mp3 player with both of my "ears" connected to it, meaning that I only hear the mp3 player and nothing else.  While I was doing that, Michael wanted to talk to me so I switched just my hearing aid to my normal setting so that I can hear him.  While I was talking to Michael, I was able to hear my player with my CI.  It is so strange and wonderful that I can hear out of both ears!

Fall will officially arrive this week!  Have a good one!