My name, my call sign that I always react to, that I encourage people to use to get my attention before speaking to me, is no longer familiar. It is a fundamental part of being deaf. A trigger to get things started and focused, such as, at the beginning of sentences, to avoid asking for annoying repeats or restarts.
I am not responding to people in the same old familiar way. My own voice is heard from outside of me and sounds the same as everyone else. I look up because they might be speaking to me but they are not even close by. They are outside somewhere and I cannot tell the difference. My name has become a sound, a different sound that means nothing to me. I will have to re-register it!
I think the problem is with the word. I used to hear a lightly accented 'R' followed by the short 'ay'. Now I am hearing a resonance, a positive 'Rrr' and longer but different vowel pitch nearer to a nasal 'aaaay'.
This peculiarity is confusing because I think someone is wanting to speak to me but it is only a similar and random sound. Although the sound of voices can be sharp and precise in the right environment, using a higher frequency than I am used to receiving also brings in many other sounds using this wavelength as well. The lack of tone variation at times, when listening without visual help, gives few clues away for identification. When I am caught cold (not concentrating) the sound reverts to the basic robotic theme (like Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey) but miles more refined than Stephen Hawking. There is no emotion transmitted in these words and so they are rather flat but still very speech orientated. Words are pulled out of the fog of so many background sounds going on at once as long as it does not also consist of spoken words.
The volume is a little low but because the words are so distinct it makes for easy listening compared with the usual high concentration levels I needed to focus at all times with hearing aids. The unusual low level of sound makes me uncomfortable at times because I am straining to hear as usual with this quietness and then a sound happens and I hear it instantly. It is not because I cannot hear the sound it is because the sound isn't there.
I need to relax more and trust my new hearing to deliver it when it happens and not go looking for it as I did before.
I must remember that I am learning to listen again and not be impatient.
If I see water running from a tap I recognise it. If I look away it becomes just a new sound. I have to re-associate this new sound with with the familiar image again and I will 'see' water running when I hear that sound out of sight. I know now how much I relied on visual clues to supplement my hearing. I can use this to change the sound I hear now to what it used to be as I remembered it properly from years ago. My brain will do the work seamlessly, like speaking a new language, once I have enough variation in the sound clues to work with.
I am beginning to understand how blind and deaf people can, and do, learn other languages. It is a strange thing to find an understanding in me when that difficult time has passed but I can see now how, with all the obstacles that deafness presents, a deaf person has every bit (if not more) of the capacity to excel in a competitive hearing world. They just need some understanding and consideration from those who take their hearing for granted and insist on this world being a hearing place.
A friend, with the most amazing Viking hair style that I have ever seen on a girl (that puts my crude one sided surgical shave to shame), asked me which side my implant was on. I didn't initially recognise my name was called but registered the sound and looked up. She repeated the question and I replied "it is on the left". She relayed this to the person by her side that she had been speaking to (unbeknown to me) and it suddenly dawned on me what I had just done! She was thirty feet away from me not standing close as I had first thought she was.
So many changes, so many things the same and never any as expected.
When I feel comfortable and at ease with friends I relax and get caught out just listening when I should be taking part and today I fell flat on my face with a simple question I could not grasp and understand at all. When it was repeated (for the fourth time) with different words I was so embarrassed by its simplicity and need for just a one word answer.
Much more work to do I think!
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