No earmold necessary!!

Here's a picture of me wearing my CI all dressed up.  Right now I have four different "tie-dye" colors to choose from.  Fun!  Or I could just wear it plain, but I never do.  This picture shows me wearing my smaller battery.  It's hard to see in the picture, but there's a plastic wire from my processor behind my ear to my round headpiece.  My headpiece is attached (via magnet) to my implant that is under my skin.  If you want to see what the implant that's under my skin looks like, here's a link.

When I was out shopping the other day, I had a funny thing happen.  You know how you come out into the parking lot to find that the car next to you pulled in leaving hardly any room to spare?  Don't you hate that?  As I was squeezing to get in, my magnetic headpiece got knocked off and attached itself to my car door!

Funny how time flies while on vacation.  I got lots of back-to-school shopping in while Simon was at band camp this week.  After I would drop him off each morning, I would just run into a town and do some shopping!

I feel like that I'm making progress with my listening.  Both Simon and Michael are continuing reading aloud to me while I follow along without having to point to the words.   I need to try listening to books on tape with the corresponding unabridged books--it will be interesting to see how I do with that.  (Any suggestions for books?)  Simon and I will come up with sets of sentences of similar lengths, then Simon will randomly say one of the sentences and I listen to figure out which one it is.  Usually for each new set of sentences, it takes about two rounds before I can get them all right!  We started with sets of two sentences then progressed to three.  Simon has been rolling the dice to decide which sentence to say which I think is a neat idea!  One time while pondering which sentences to use, I came up with "I will clean up my room."  Simon would not use that sentence!!

One time when I was outside wearing both my CI and hearing aid, I noticed that I was hearing something with my CI alone.  My hearing aid did not pick it up at all.  I don't know what made that sound, but that experience was a very weird sensation for me.  I had that same sensation another time while I was inside, but again, I didn't know what the sound was. 

I have been wearing my CI at the highest setting and when I'm wearing it alone (without my hearing aid) sometimes I get the feeling that my CI is constantly "on" and picking up on something.  I can't always identify the sound.  Sometimes I believe it's my clothes swishing while I'm walking.  I must be getting used to it as I haven't had the feeling that sound is always occurring the past two days.  When I go back for another mapping session, I will probably go through that cycle again.  I guess it's like when you think it's quiet, but if you really listen, you'll hear something.