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!