AFTER A SURGE OF INTEREST I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO POST SOME UPDATES. HERE WE GO!

Four years have gone by in a flash.

I stopped writing when I felt I would get repetitive, boring or inconsequential.

 “A deaf person who sees two men in conversation may nevertheless understand from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, how well their discussion is getting along”.    

~  Leonardo da Vinci  ~

The above skill has not left me. So many times I have been confused between what I hear and what I see. The difference is that now I don’t automatically doubt the hearing side and can mistrust the sincerity behind the words instead. My old deaf ‘aides auditives’ are still put to good use. Like lip-reading, they may have diminished now they get less practise but they are still definitely there.

What have I gained and what is just the same?

The list of gains is way too  long for here.I will endeavour to introduce them a bit at a time. Likewise the annoying bits that have not returned to what I remember them to be.

Although my Cochlear Nucleus 6 processor is designed to recognise and enhance speech sounds over distracting background noises, I find the reinstatement of the mundane sounds of everyday life to be the most satisfying. I hear the kettle boil, the gas flame ignite, the microwave ping, the postman knock, the indicator click in the car, the leaves rustle in the trees and things that fall from my pockets and drop on the floor! The clock ticking, like many new constant sounds has passed from a new itch I can’t scratch to something that can be ignored and fades away. 

My favourite statement now is   “when everything is quiet I no longer look around just in case I am missing something. If I don’t hear anything it is because there is no sound.”

What is the same, is when I go to bed and remove the processor. I am now totally and utterly deaf as what little hearing I once had in my other ear is now gone. When away from home I must inform my host that in case of a fire or danger they have my permission to knock down the door and force entry into my room if necessary as I will otherwise sleep on unaware. Alarms must be by vibration alert as before if they are to be effective. Telephones, smoke alarms, fire alarms doorbells and neighbours no longer exist when I go to bed.

Conversation can still be difficult with unfamiliar voices. I am more annoyed with how people speak than what they say. It is as if I have missed a whole generation of language deviation. I detect much more nuance in sounds, accents and inflections that make voices richer now that all my concentration does not have to go into just noting the words. It is still very easy to become distracted by another sound or when the voices are hard to follow. I still do best with a face to go with the spoken words. My brain prefers it, to help out. This means I am not a casual listener. Overhearing conversations in public has to be a deliberate act of concentration. This does get confusing with my lack of directional hearing. The closest or loudest is not necessarily the best heard. 

I can easily recognise a speech pattern though not all the words said. This loss of definition is no longer a problem, I am happy to note the buzz of conversation as a sign of life and accept it as a part of the background. If it impinges on my own conversation it can be annoying but learning to concentrate in those surrounding is a work in progress. Trying to decipher two people speaking at once with equal volume is impossible for me. They merge and confound me instantly.

I now understand the enormous part my brain plays in the hearing process. The physical part of the ear to transmit sound is very basic compared with the processing undertaken by the brain afterwards. It is this ability to adapt and change and redirect that is bringing my hearing back to a version of normal again.

The appreciation of music has been a long time coming. Most of it is still uninteresting and, on occasions, unpleasant. I would make a very controversial music critic. I would just call it all rubbish and hate every thing! Slowly single instruments are being identified and singing appreciated without trying to understand the lyrics as long as it has a good tune!

A new Cochlear processor, the Nucleus sound 7, is now available. I hope to be upgraded to this in the near future. Loads of improvements, computing power and an even smaller device. More on that when it happens.

The Nucleus Sound 7

Most of all I am now relaxed.  No longer so tired.         More sociable and much more content.

Next time something about my new found freedom and experiences.

SWITCHING OFF MY BRAIN IS NOT AN OPTION

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

~  Helen Keller  ~

This week was the second tweak and another chance to see what improvements can be had. My new audiogram with the processor in place was revealed to be "near normal for conversation" at a hearing level not seen in me for about thirty years. There will probably not be any more improvement on that but it is still good to see. The changes will likely be in my improved perception and understanding. Likewise my word recognition test shows an 86% success rate with assisted lip reading in controlled quiet conditions. That's an improvement of 50% in two weeks. It sounds good and I am very pleased but the real world outside the quiet room is a very different place. To help, I now have two channels to use. One is to eliminate as much background noise as possible for close speakers in noisy places and the other has been boosted for some more volume in quieter places.

 

It is a bonus to be in Norfolk and in a very wordy, variable and conversational place. I am getting much more practise than I normally would. I do try to be patient, I really do! The problem is in me and too much variety to be able to concentrate on one aspect at a time. It is seeing the good results that keep me steady and on course, with just a few stumbles in the dark sometimes. Speaking of which .....

 

I was returning to the campsite late in the evening. I did not take the field path in the dark in case I slipped in the mud (or worse!) and dislodged my processor. Searching for it in the gloom would have been on hands and knees. If it had landed in the horse ... manure, and then I trod on it by mistake the audiologist would probably be upset and possibly refuse to handle it on my next visit! So I walked along the road instead.

 

It was a very quiet moonlit night with a clear sky and I only had my own footsteps for company. I heard the distinct sound of a car but could see nothing in front of me. I genuinely thought the sound came from behind me. Was it because I could see nothing and my brain was making the decision for me on the evidence it had? I stood still in the road in complete silence and waited. Around the corner behind me I now saw the lights of a car approaching but if it had been daytime it would not have been visible. Was it luck or hearing ability? It safely passed me by. After passing some houses and hearing the sound of a tv program (not in detail) in someone's living room I heard another car from behind. I moved out of the road and a little later it appeared. Did I really hear the direction or did my brain just deduce the location by some subconscious calculation? I should not have been able to do it with only one ear. It was helped by the beautiful quietness of the night. Daytime has not been so successful. There are too many distracting noises going on. Still it is good to see that given the right conditions my hearing can be near to normal, what ever that is! What made the walk so pleasant was the fact that I had accepted the silence as just that. No sound heard meant no sound was happening. I had no need to strain to hear because I might be missing something. Just acceptance of what I had. Allowing the sounds to come and go as they were rather than go looking for them. A very relaxed and restful state of mind for a change.

Just when I thought peace was now my good companion I found myself with more trouble than a passing motorcar!

 

During lunch I switched over to channel two and enjoyed a conversation with my companions at the table without the general chatter all around me. After the meal I forgot I was still on that setting. Walking back through the woods, now in the sunshine, I came to a group of tree surgeons cutting down trees and trimming some high branches. I noticed they were using a chipping machine on the cut branches collected on the ground by the path. They were wearing ear protection and I realised the reason I could not hear the machine clearly was the background noise suppression I had. So here were two colliding entities coming together with no ability to hear each other properly or full awareness of all around them. As I walked by, leaves came falling down onto my head and when I looked up there was a man high in the tree using a chainsaw (with ear protection) to cut through the branches overhead and some had already fallen onto the path in front of me. If they had shouted, "Oi, it's not safe there!" or "LOOK OUT!" I would have carried on in my own quiet little world until I was flattened by an unseen and unheard branch about six inches thick. Then they would have got my attention. As this was on private land they probably thought no signs were needed to warn of "men at work overhead". They knew where each other were and what they were doing in order to work safely together in a hazardous occupation but they did not hear me coming unexpectedly into their territory.

 

That is my world all the time. Those little signs and signals that are all a part of aiding my brain to notice unrecognisable things and support the learning process.

I may ignore a few people sometimes but not a falling leaf in the summer time. My hearing still needs all the help it can get!

'A NAME BY ANY OTHER SOUND .....'

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!

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A TWEAK MAKES

If thou art a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf.

~  Thomas Fuller  ~

It’s only been a few days but enormous changes are happening to me. I feel so much a part of what is going on around me. Frequently, I get confused as my ability to hear changes with the environment I am in. The difficulty is that I cannot, as yet, sense those changes, only feel the end result. Multiple voices blend into one unintelligible tangle but as people leave the tangles unravel until, when only one or two remain, the voice rings out. I just don’t always see or hear the people leaving when I am trying to concentrate so hard. It seems as if it just clarifies on its own.

I have no concept of variable volume, just good and bad perception. I continue with the lack of dynamics in my hearing that give me depth, subtle variations of distance, direction, individuality and therefore precision. Sounds I hear in buckets full, but what I am hearing still needs extra help. Visual and memory support makes some sense of the disembodied individual words. I won’t get run over now when crossing the road in front of me but I don’t know what it is that will be aiming at me from around the corner when I am looking the other way.

Tweak one

I have just had my first tweak and increase in sound variety, blend and volume. This is the trial and error path to finding my individual hearing map. This is something personal and would not suit someone else. There is no ‘one size fits all’ with this device. I will continue these weekly adjustments for a month as we explore the gains and disadvantages towards the best solution possible, not normality.

My word recognition test was definitely more difficult this time. The multiple syllables in the words ran into each other and some vowels dragged. The sharper sounds echoed. This took away the precision of some individual words, making them more easily confused with background distractions such as tinnitus which they sometimes copied. My hearing was not worse, it was just my brain trying to assimilate more elements from difficult combinations that were previously unknown and dismissed as unintelligible. The choice of test words is not random, this is deliberate.

Homeward

On leaving the hospital I noticed subtle differences in those ever present footsteps on the hard floors (and the doors creaked!) Outside the most obvious difference was in the variety and perception of the traffic noises. That was less welcome. 

At the railway station I could almost understand the tannoy. I knew it was there but its lack of personality gave me nothing to get hold of, nor visual clues to read. That is going to be the hard part. The difference is that now I did not dismiss it out of hand. I try to understand what is said whether it is important or not. It is all part of the learning process. What I am pleased with is that I have been encouraged to actively use the visual signs and signals I have learnt over the years to help support me, such as lip reading. It helps the weird disjointed voices in my head attach themselves to the people I am speaking to. This separates them from each other and the crowd of automatons everywhere around me. It can be like a attending a happy Darlek Convention in the countryside! My time away from home is turning out to be opportune with so much talk and very little traffic. When I do return home I will have to replace this with extra visits to the theatre and public gatherings rather than stay in with my computer which seems to make as much noise as it can to distract me. I am beginning to think I must be annoying other people by making so much noise.

Back on site

I have a new bright yellow hat to signify I am switched off and resting my brain for a while when I wear it. As it can be seen from far away it saves the problem of causing offence by ignoring people unintentionally when they approach me. They can either avoid me or know they have to be more determined.

I cannot recognise the sound of my own name, Oi comes across much clearer. Perhaps I should get a new one?