Listening to TV on plane flight with cochlear implant

Ben and I flew to Perth last month to attend the Hear For You mentoring program for deaf kids in Western Australia.

It’s a 5 hour flight from Sydney to Perth - I normally hate flying long flights because I can’t hear the announcements (freak out when pilot says anything, think we’re going to crash); can’t watch TV (no captions); can’t listen to the radio (I’m deaf remember); can’t read a newspaper (too big for economy!); and get bored of my book after 3 hours of reading.

So had readied myself for torture.

I am a nervous flyer. All the captain has to do is murmur "It's a beautiful day outside, and we're 20 minutes from Sydney." and because I can never quite hear clearly what the announcements say, I'll freak out, thinking "What did he say?? Did he say we are going to crash??!! Oh my god, we're all going to die!" And then wonder why everyone else starts reading the newspaper and ordering beer. Delightful.

We were flying Virgin Blue which is budget, so you have to pay to watch TV if you want it. After we settled in, and took off, they made an announcement that the credit card payment machines attached to the back of the headrests were broken, so they were going to give everyone free TV for the whole flight.

Everyone whooped and cheered, except me, because I thought I wasn’t going to be able to hear anything, so would be left out yet again.

But then I thought, geez, if it’s 5 hours of free TV and movies, I’m going to have a go. I’ll just watch the pictures if I have to – that will be better than just being bored out of my mind.

I held up the headphones to my hearing aid and cochlear implant and tried to follow the TV – I could hear it, but it was so static-ey and unclear, it was really disappointing. On a whim, I decided to try the ‘t-switch’ on both hearing aid and cochlear implant, which shuts out all the background noise, and only picks up the radio signals coming from TV. You have to have special headphones for that, so I didn’t think the Virgin ones would work.

But surprise! They had an operational telecoil built in! No notification anywhere, those stupid dolts. It turned out even Virgin Blue themselves didn’t know their flipping ear phones were built in with telecoil adaptability. Pathetic.

Holding the ear bud up to my ear, suddenly I could hear the audio quite clearly! I turned to Ben going “I can hear it! I can hear it!”

Wrapping my scraf around my head I managed to get the ear bud close enough to the cochlear implant microphone to be able to hear the audio for the TV/movies on the Virgin Blue flight. I sat like this for 5 hours from Perth to Sydney.

Small obstacle was the fact that the headphones provided were ear-bud types. Now that is difficult for cochlear implantees, since the microphone for picking up sound is behind your ear, not in it!

Ben said: “Why don’t you try sticking it to your microphone?” and I’m like “With what??”

In the end we wrapped a scarf around my head, and I sat like that for the whole 5 hours, and was able to watch TV and hear it perfectly.

 

It’s been 4.5 months now

So it’s been four and a half months now since I got the cochlear implant in my right ear.

I haven’t written an update in a while, because I haven’t felt like there is anything interesting to report!

But I guess what I think of as being boring, my family and friends might find interesting.

So, here we go.

Since I last wrote, I am hearing so much better than before – in fact, my last sentence and word perception test had these results:

• sentences – 100 per cent
• words – 87 per cent
• sentences in noise – 95 per cent

So… yes. It is amazing. I am still profoundly deaf when I take off my cochlear implant and hearing aid, but now I can actually hear stuff when I have them on.

I’ve been having conversations with Ben without facing him, so it looks like I can definitely hear some people without lip-reading.

I have also been still using the web captel trial put on by ACE.  This means I’ve been able to practice using the telephone calling normally, and still listen and hear what people are saying.

And I am pleased to say that I can hear most of what people say on the phone now, without captions. Amazing. People have no idea that they are speaking to a deaf person on the phone.

When I call Ben or mum, I don’t use captions at all. Ben always whines now when I call – “Why do you have to call me all the time now!?” HAHA! He liked it better when I just texted. Now I am calling up to say things like: ” I am walking down the street! What do you think of that! I am passing a garbage bin. What are you doing? Look, a bird!”

And as for other news, I have been elected to the board of ACCAN, which is the Australian Communication Consumer Action Network – this will mean that I can really make it known what deaf people, or those with other disabilities will need in order to stay connected in Australia. For example, people don’t realise that for the Web CapTel trial to work, it is important that you have a stable internet connection that doesn’t drop out. If it drops out you may be logged out or your captions will stop coming through and you will have to reconnect. Imagine having to do that during an important phone call!

I’ve also been nominated and shortlisted for a 2009 Australian Human Rights Community Award for work with deafness and disability in Australia. WOWSER! Doubt I will win (you should see the actual shortlist! amazing people), but it’s still a hugely great honour to be shortlisted!

As for other stuff happening with the cochlear implant – I was over at my friend Georgia’s house the other week, having an ‘infrared sauna’. She runs a natural therapies studio. She gave me a pamphlet to read in the sauna so I could see all the good stuff it was doing. At the very back in tiny letters it said: “Do not use this sauna if you have an implant i.e. pace maker or silicon.”

And I was like “WHAAAAAAAAT!!!!!??” slapped my hand over my ear, and jumped out – thought maybe my head was going to explode! I mean, I didnt have the external bit on, but I thought maybe it might melt my brain, make it come out my ears, and turn me into a zombie.

It didn’t however (that might have been kind of cool), and I checked with Cochlear Ltd later – they said that according to their information from engineers etc, infrared shouldn’t affect cochlear implants (nor should any other sauna – good to know!).

Yay for cochlear implants. Such a new invention, it’s like being the first person to walk on the moon or something. You just don’t know what might happen when you do stuff that is considered normal! like brains exploding from saunas. Awesome.

 

Is a cochlear implant really that good?

Got an interesting comment from someone who’s read my blog:

I am glad you are purporting success with the device, and are such an active advocate.  Indeed your story is miraculous compared to the ones I have come across (numbness, tinnitus, excruciating pain from hair, white noise).  So I am wandering if you are another version of the ‘cochlear volunteers’ distributing erroneous information for a kickback your readers are not informed of.  I guess if you publish this and an accurate answer, I need not be suspicious and outraged by the ’social networking’ propoganda cochlear will go to maximise their profits.
Ruth

And I think it’s a really valid comment.

I was extremely suspicious of anyone that told me a cochlear implant was good before I had one, and for good reason. It’s just hard to believe how it could be as good as they say it is. And you read all these blogs, and talk to all these people, and every single person has a different experience.

I decided to get an implant after I saw a deaf woman I know who had two cochlear implants talking on the phone. That’s when I thought, oh well, it might work – and if it doesn’t, I havent lost anything.

After I was booked in for this surgery, I started this blog because I thought everyone would think that an implant was a miracle cure, and think I would be ‘fixed’ once I had it, and I knew it wasn’t going to be like that. I wanted my friends and family to know the truth. ‘Course the truth turned out to be pretty good for me.  But I didn’t know that was what it was going to be like.

Perhaps my optimism about the implant has come from the fact that I really didn’t expect it to be that good.

My only expectation was really that it would  help with my lip-reading. And I knew that it might not even do that. So I was realistic.

My wish was that I wouldn’t have to lip-read, but I figured that was a wish only.

So, the bad parts of my experience are few… I was having dinner with friends the other night in a pub in Perth. We were discussing each other’s cochlear implants (there were three of us there who had just recently had one in the past year.)

We were talking about the horror stories, and I mentioned that I freaked out the day after my surgery when I leant forward and this rusty coloured fluid came out my nose! Thought my brain was melting! But it was only a few drops, and then it stopped, so I figured that I was ok. I forgot to put that in the blog, but I guess you could call that a ‘bad’ or scary part of the surgery. Actually, that sounds lame. It was not really blog mention worthy.

So, what other things suck about cochlear implants? because I really have been too complimentary to them, haven’t I?

Well. let me count the ways:

• I hate the way it feels on my head, both the processor and the internal bit. But it’s worth it to be able to hear ok, and I figure I’ll get used to it. Hey, I’m an eternal optimist. But I must say, I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with my ear feeling a bit numb, and thinking ‘oh god, I have metal in my head’. That is a bit yuck.
• It’s a stupid design. Every time I want to change a program, it takes a few seconds to press.
• I worry about the bit inside my head breaking. If it breaks, I am stuffed, because getting a replacement internal bit is not guaranteed to work as well as the first one, because removing the implant damages in the inner structure of the ear, i.e. the cochlea. So that is something that is in the back of my mind a lot – I might lose all this at any time.
• You can’t do contact sports any more after this. That kind of sucks, even though I dont play contact sports of any kind – I just dont like being told “You cant do this any more because …” you know?
• It kind of sucks how many batteries it takes – I spend $1 every day on a battery, that’s $365 per year. They are fiddly little things too. When I am 100 years old it’s going to suck changing those things.
• Sometimes I can hear on the phone and other times I can’t. Sometimes I can hear TV, other times I can’t. It’s not consistent.

As for Cochlear Ltd being the best cochlear implant company, I don’t know about that anymore. I mainly support them because they are Australian, and pretty reliable.

From the research I have done, it sounds like Med-El would be a good cochlear implant – it apparently has a slimmer electrode, which goes deeper into the cochlea, and gives you more spectrum of sound, and therefore makes speech and sound more natural.

I am seriously considering getting a Med-El for my second implant.

But who knows!

So there you go… And what’s the answer to the million dollar question?

Is the cochlear implant really that good? Well, the answer is …. for some, yes. For others, no.  It’s as simple as that.

Everyone’s different, and that is probably the most frustrating thing about a cochlear implant ever. There is absolutely no guarantee about how it’s going to work.

I was brave enough to deal with the possible consequences, as I was well aware of the possible outcomes – which was that it might not help me at all.

It’s scary.

And that’s why whenever you meet someone who’s had a cochlear implant, or the parent of a child with an implant (because they’ve had to make the same decision!) you should think about the difficult decision they made, and no matter what outcome – give them a pat them on the back and say: “Respect to you for being brave, mate.”

 

Using the telephone with a cochlear implant

This is an interesting one.

Since my last post, I have been trying the phone more and more, and find that I can’t always hear what people are saying really clearly. No matter what program on the implant I use, it’s not always clear. Some days I can hear, other days I can’t. Some people I can hear, other people I can’t. All very inconsistent.

But I have discovered something really cool.

The first ever captioned telephony trial is taking place in Australia right now, it started last week, and 100 people from around Australia were selected to take part after registering.

I am one of them, and I have taken part in the ‘Web Captel’ trial a couple of times in the last couple of days.

Using webcaptel is so much better than the old TTY phone system. You can hear and speak normally with the person on the other end, and read what they say as captions on your computer screen. Awesome.

Basically, the way it works is you must have a computer in front of you connected to the internet, and a telephone, either mobile or landline.

I’ll tell you how I called my bank the other day:

I visted the website url they gave me, and logged in (you must have a username and password).

Then I simply typed in the phone number of the phone that was sitting next to me, and then the phone number of the bank I wanted to call.

Pressed enter…

Suddenly, my phone rang.

I picked it up – there was no one at the other end, but all of a sudden, the website page I had open popped up a text pane, and the relay officer in Brisbane started typing: “Calling number as requested… Ringing…”, and then, listening to my phone, I could hear the ringing sounds at the other end.

“Hello?” I said uncertainly.

“Hello, this is the bank, how can we help today?”

And the words of the other person suddenly came up on the screen in front of me as I listened to her – word for word.

I squealed with delight!

“I want help with my homeloan please! Eeeeeee!”

“Yes sure… Account number please, and your [brsghsghgh behjhjee and jsjkdksj].”

Suddenly I had missed something she said, so I waited half a second, and it soon appeared on my computer:

Yes sure, account number please, and your password and name as it appears on the account.

Dang! This thing, it worked! I gave her the answer, and then I just couldn’t contain myself:

“Miss, this is the coolest thing ever, did you know you are talking to a profoundly deaf person, and everything you are saying is appearing in front of me in text on my computer? It’s called WebCaptel and it is soooo cool!”

She said, “Um… what? webcaptel? I’m on your computer? uh… that’s .. ” then she laughed, “that’s great! … yes, wonderful! …”

And I could hear the smile in her voice. You can’t hear smiles with the normal Tele-Text Typewriter phones that the deaf use (the ones I normally use…) because you can’t hear anything, it’s only text you read, and it’s like a two-way radio.

So this new Web Captel service, I predict, will completely change the way deaf people use the telephone, and therefore communicate.

It’s also brilliant for practicing listening with my cochlear implant.

If you are interested in reading more about captioned telephony in Australia, visit the ACE website, or have a read of the ACE Web Captel user guide.

Today it feels good to be deaf in 2009.

 

Week 11: What can I hear now?

OK, now for our weekly update on what I can hear now! Yaaaay.

Today I made a phone call to someone I didn’t know.

That’s a big thing, because it can be kind of hard hearing the voice of an unfamiliar person on the phone.

I have been talking to Ben and mum on the phone heaps now since the implant (wow!) and unfortunately, I have the phone bills to prove it.

So, today, I decided to take the leap, and try and call someone I didnt know.

Perfect moment came up when I realised that it was tax-time.

Considering I got audited last year by the tax department because I tried claiming my hearing aids and hearing aid batteries as work expenses, I decided I should probably get someone official to do it this time, just in case.

So, I called the local tax accountants near my work.

I had to prepare myself mentally. Making a phone call like this can freak me out!

So, I got organised, went into the ‘Quiet Room’ at my office, took a few crazy breaths, felt ridiculous, and then dialled. A woman answered:

“Hello? “

Clear as a bell. I wondered briefly if I should tell her that she was talking to a profoundly deaf person. But no – I decided it would freak her out… Like walking up to someone, in full view, and shouting “I am invisible!”

And besides! I could understand what she was saying. And so we had a normal phone conversation.

It was a little bit unclear in parts – I mean, she was talking normally, not clear and slower than normal, like my family knows how to speak to me – she had no idea she was talking to a profoundly deaf robot person!

So, I was able to talk to her, book an appointment, and also check what documents I needed to bring. That was pretty awesome. But also bizarre.

I mean, who hangs up the phone after talking to their local tax accountant all flushed and excited!? Geez, I hope I never get used to using the phone if it’s this fun to use each time. A bit nerve wracking, but totally worth it.

Another cool experience was the gym.

Now, anyone with a significant hearing loss like mine knows that when you go to a gym class, like say, pilates or yoga (as I am wont to d0), that you need to position yourself in such a way that people are surrounding you – so you can copy people from all angles as you do your moves.

Because, obviously, when you are deaf you can’t hear a word the instructor is saying, and you can’t always see them from your contorted positions!

After years of yoga classes, I have become a master of copying moves of everyone around me without them knowing, and I can even can pre-determine what sort of move a person is about to make, just by the way they are breathing. I try not to look like I am watching my fellow classmates too intently, because I guess it would freak anyone out if they realised they were being stared at doing the ‘Downward Dog’.

Anyway, so I was at one of my regular classes, and I felt particularly rested and relaxed during the class for some reason. I hadn’t realised it, but I was actually hearing the instructor saying: “Breathe in. Breathe out, and hold for 4, 3, 2, 1… And relax…”

I couldn’t believe it.

I sat bolt up-right in the class while everyone else was lying down crouched in some bizarre lotus position, heads down, arses up, and arms bent… I double-checked. Yep. The instructor had her head bent down too, still speaking, and I was hearing every word of it.  

I lay back down in my contorted position, and just grinned like a madman.

Yoga gym junkie gibberish never sounded so good.

 

Senate inquiry into hearing health launched in Australia

This is an important shout-out to all my Australian readers with a hearing loss.

The Australian Federal Government has launched a full Senate Inquiry into deafness!

Is there anything about having a hearing loss or being deaf that frustrates you?

• Have you ever felt annoyed at the cost of buying – and maintaining – hearing aids and cochlear implants?
• Have you ever been upset by the low standard of services of an audiologist?
• Ever wished you could stay with Australian Hearing after you were 21 years old?

The Australian Federal Government want to hear from EVERYONE in Australia about what issues they face when they have to deal with a hearing loss.

They are planning on using your input to change the way hearing health is dealt with in Australia.

It is so important that you email them to let them know what it is like for YOU personally.

All you have to do is send a short email to community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au by 9 October 2009, letting them know what frustrates you most about your hearing loss in Australia, and what you would like to change.

I have done one already. If you need help in knowing what to write, have a look here.

http://katelocke.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/submission-australian-senate-inquiry-hearing-health/

This is your chance to finally let your Government know how difficult it can be living with a hearing loss in a hearing world.

Don’t miss this chance.

 

My submission to the Australian Senate Inquiry into Hearing Health

30 September 2009

Re: Inquiry into Hearing Health in Australia

To the Community Affairs References Committee (community.affairs.sen@aph.gov.au):

I would like to make a submission to the Hearing Health Inquiry.

I am a deaf young professional living and working in Australia.

The current Australian hearing health system is antiquated and not working well at all – it makes being deaf in Australia very difficult and expensive.

For example:

• my hearing loss was first discovered at age 11, and I was given hearing aids without any sort of rehabilitation or support. it took me ages to get used to them and to wear them. It was a traumatising experience as a child. I didnt wear the ones I was given at 13 until I was 18, because I hadnt been given adequate support in understanding how to use them
• When I did start wearing them, I received free hearing aids and batteries through Australian Hearing which was fantastic, and really helped.
• then suddenly at the age of 21, just when I was unemployed and studying full time at university, I was told I could no longer get any services through Australian Hearing
• I had to find a private audiologist, and many that I had didnt understand my hearing loss well enough, and I bought hearing aids from each of them, when one would have been enough. Each hearing aid is about $3,500 to $4,000. I was also convinced to buy expensive additional gadgets  for up to $1,500, which I have never used, because it was not correct for my hearing loss.
• One of my hearing aids broke and I had to buy a new one, as it was not covered under private health insurance
• I had to get a personal loan to pay for it, and then I had to go on Centrelink payments as well, because I had trouble paying my rent.
• I have just received my first cochlear implant. I had to take out private health insurance in order to get this over 3 years at $90 per month. None of my hearing friends pay anywhere near this amount for private health insurance.
• I had to take out special cochlear implant insurance at $300 per year to cover my cochlear implant, when someone who has an ipod can get that covered with their home and contents insurance. I have tried to get my cochlear implant covered under home and contents, and all the big insurers refuse to cover them.
• I’ve had to buy a special TTY phone and special Telstra HipTop mobile phone in order to communicate with people, as these are the only two I can use being a deaf person.
• Audiologists charge huge amounts for ear moulds when you don’t need them (up to $250), and for repairs (up to $500), and for batteries (they cost me $300 a year).
• I have been to see the Minister for Ageing about these issues, but as hearing health is under Ageing, it’s not the main part of the portfolio. Hearing health gets lost in Ageing. It needs to be put over into Health.
• Hearing health is not an ageing issue, I am only 29 years old, it is a health issue. Many of my deaf friends are under 30 years old.

There is an essential inequity as to how hearing health is perceived as compared to other health issues, even though hearing loss is one of the most prevalent health issues in Australia.

According to the Access Economics Report, one in six Australians has some form of hearing impairment, and this is projected to increase to one in four by 2050 (from Access Economics (2006) Listen Hear – The Economic Impact and Cost of hearing loss in Australia).

I would like to see the following changes made to the way hearing health is dealt with in Australia:

1. Hearing health should be moved out from under the Federal government Ageing portfolio, and placed under the Federal Government Health portfolio, alongside eye health. It currently does not receive the attention it deserves under the Ageing portfolio.
2. Subsidised government services should be offered via ‘Australian Hearing’ to people between the ages of 21 and 65 if they are on a low income, unemployed, full time students, or part time students. In Australia there is currently no help for these people in affording hearing aids, implants and other hearing health services.
3. Insurance companies should cover hearing aids and cochlear implants if they are lost or broken. Currently most insurers will cover silly things like iPods, but not a cochlear implant processor, which is $8,000 to replace, and vital for many to be able to hear.
4. Former child clients of Australian Hearing who are not unemployed, students, or on low incomes should not be suddenly cut off from services of Australian Hearing. They should be able to pay for services to stay on at Australian Hearing with their audiologist.
5. All hearing aids, cochlear implants and other hearing health aides should be able to be claimed as a tax deduction once someone starts work. Currently you can’t claim expensive hearing aids as a tax deduction.

Thanks for accepting my submission.

Sincerely,

Kate Locke

 

Captioning Awards night in August

Back in August, I attended the Deafness Forum of Australia’s captioning awards.

It was a really exciting event – I had no idea how big, and impressively run it was. John Howard has recently become the Deafness Forum’s ambassador, so he was there at the dinner. That was a bonus.

I have some great photos below. I actually won an award. It was a total surprise – it was the Roma Wood Community Award for dedication to improving captioning and media access across DVDs, cinemas, online videos and TV in Australia.

I am very honoured to get that.

And the other reason it’s nice to win it – I tell you what – I have been making noise about the lack of captioning for so long, and it is quite depressing how little movement there is in relation to it.

It’s truly heart breaking sometimes to see how uninterested big companies are about whether or not a person with a disability can access their services.

Can you imagine what it is like to not be able to do something as simple as watch TV? When a TV station doesn’t caption its programs, that it what happens for people with a hearing loss.

It is worse for blind people – audio description is more expensive, and harder to get on different types of media.

Yes, it’s distressing to have a hearing or vision impairment! You can get very cut off from normal every day things that people take for granted.

So anyway, it was a nice change to have all the industry types in one big room, all in unanimous support of accessibility of media for deaf and hearing impaired people. (Note: A noticable absence was the ABC  – every other TV station had someone there, but the ABC declined to send anyone. That was a bit of a shock to me! I’ve always thought the ABC was the best in this respect. Obviously not.)

Check out the photos below:

Telling him about the implant: "That's right, Mr Howard, they DRILL INTO YOUR HEAD!!"

Me: "Pfft, it doesn't hurt a bit!" Mr Howard: "Riiight." (*Maureen wimpers, wipes eyes!*)

 

Me: "Why don't you get one, Mr Howard".... Him: "Are you kidding me!!!??" (Just joking!)

Talking to all the cinema, TV, and DVD distributors after winning the community award: "You've all got to caption everything, or you're in biiiiiig trouble!"

Standing with Hugh and Andrew from Printacall - they sponsored the community award - thanks so much guys, you made my night.

 

Week 8: What can I hear now?

Ok, now this is amazing.

I have had my Week 8 mapping session with Monica at the Sydney Cochlear Implant Centre, and afterwards, she tested my hearing … and I did incredibly well.

Monica suggested I mention on this blog that my result is a bit out of the ordinary – the average word perception is 30 per cent a year after an implant.

The reason to mention that is so as not to give a cochlear implant an inflated promotion! Anyone out there considering getting one – make sure you understand that everyone is different, and different people achieve different results at different times.

(How’s that for a disclaimer, huh?)

Anyway, results from this weeks mapping:

• Sentences with just implant – 100% (before implant – 13%)
• Sentences in noise with both hearing aid and implant - 95% (before implant – 45-50%)
• Single words by themselves with just implant - 72% (before implant – 0%)

This is just … unbelievable.

And the most difficult part was done with just my cochlear implant, not even using my hearing aid ear.

I am flabbergasted for want of better words…

I am going to now:

1. cry a bit
2. then laugh
3. then make myself a cup of tea
4. then wait impatiently for Ben to come home from work so I can tell him
5. then maybe get too excited, and try and call my mum on the phone
6. then I am going to run around the house grinning like a mad-man and jump on the bed. Oh wait. Maybe I will do that now.

In fact, I am going to do them all at once.

 

Week 6.5: Overhearing conversations

I just read a comment from a lovely lady I met in Canberra for the Deafness Summit last year – she lives in Melbourne and got a cochlear implant I think either early this year or late last year.

Anyway, here is part of her comment, and I found it really struck me as being one of the unintended benefits of a cochlear implant when it works really well:

….I notice that I am much more likely to speak to strangers- in the past I avoided having chance conversations with people I didnt know. I really enjoy this – it has been an unexpected benefit.
Wendy

This is something that I have come to notice with my cochlear implant.

Where I used to avoid looking at people, even in the lift at work, or on the street, or on the bus … now … I actually see people in a different light, and am much more open, and feeling like I am looking around for a random conversation! It is GREAT. People with normal hearing might not understand that feeling of imprisonment where you can’t really talk to the people around you.

On the bus the other night, everyone was sitting quietly as they made their way home, and behind me, a woman’s mobile phone rang. She started talking on the phone, not loudly, but unbelievably, I could actually hear what she was  saying.

I sat there, this huge grin spreading over my face, as I listened to the voice behind me - it was the first conversation I had ever ‘overheard’, and it was wonderful. Everyone on the bus sat there looking glum as they were ‘forced’ to listen to her ’boring’ conversation…

But what they don’t realise is that, no matter how boring, these snippets give you a tiny window into someone else’s life! Hell, I know she was discussing the fact that her friend Brian couldn’t make Pub Trivia on Thursday night because he was working too hard in a new job…. but geez …. when you can hear stuff like that, it’s like people around you become more like …. people  … and not strangers.

So, I kind of half swivelled my head towards her and commented: “I reckon you should tell Brian life is too short, he should go to Trivia, they won’t fire him for leaving on time.”

There was dead silence.

People around me on the  turned their heads, surprised that I had spoken.

I heard a giggle.

Then some people smiled.

I turned back grinning hugely.

Then behind me she mumbled into the phone: “Maybe … I’ll tell Brian he should come….”

I felt like saying to everyone: “You people can HEAR!!!! You should all be talking and having conversations with the strangers next to you everywhere!!! Don’t take it for granted! Talk people!!! Talk!!!”

Maybe everyone needs a good bout of deafness to get their humanity working again.

 

5.5 weeks since switch on – some photos

Thought I would post some pictures that I have been taking along this journey.

These ones are from the very first moment Ben set me up to listen to an audio book. It was a wonderful moment! I hadn’t done this since before my hearing  became so bad when I was about  15 years old.

Kate’s Totally Awesome Personal Audio Book Party

Ben hooked me up to the iRiver to listen to the audio book. Here is saying to me, "Can you work out where you are in the book?" And I am trying to listen to see if I can pick up where in the book the audio has started.

Nearly there - what is that word? It sounds like "Chronoguards", but what the hell is a "chronoguard"?? Surely there is no such thing, and I am just not hearing it properly?

Oh my god it IS the chronoguards! I can hear the damn thing!!! OMG it's a miracle! I found where I am on the page!!! Wheeeee!

 

 

One happy little vegemite, posing with the first ever audio book that she's listened to since becoming profoundly deaf a decade ago!

 

 

Experiencing rain for the first time with the implant

And that is not all – here I have a photograph of me listening to rain for the very first time with the cochlear implant while we were having a mini-break in the Kangaroo Valley in NSW, Australia.

I said to Ben: "What's that noise?" And he said "Rain."

"Oh man!!! Rain!! I can hear it!" The first time I heard rain through the cochlear implant it sounded like the tippy top three notes trilling on an electric piano. Totally bizarre, musical and beautiful. he he he!!! I am soooo lucky!

 

And now, how about two totally unrelated pics – both of Ben – when he came home after managing to buy a whole wheel of French ‘Munster’ cheese for only AUD$5. They usually cost $90-$100, and are difficult to find in Sydney. Yes, what a bargain. He went completely nuts when he brought them home.

Ben showing that there is more than one use for a wheel of cheese.

Ben showing extreme happiness in finding a rare cheese for 5 bucks. Can't you just see imagine the squeal he is making! "Eeeeeeee! Cheeeeeeese! And it's allllll miiiiiiine!"

 

5 weeks since switch on

Ok, now for the big drum roll.

I had a speech perception test with Monica on Monday this week.

I did really, really well.

Now, to remind you what a speech perception test is – this is where I sit in front of a set of speakers in a quiet audio booth, and try to repeat back both single words, and full sentences to the audiologist, and she works out how many things I hear of each word and sentence, and then gives it a score.

I will compare them to the last one I had before I had the surgery for the implant.

These results are truly amazing to me, and confirm that I have SO MADE THE RIGHT DECISION in getting the cochlear implant.

Ok, so:

Before the implant:

• Sentences with the hearing aid in the left ear: 80%
• Sentences with hearing aid in the right ear: 13%
• Single words with the hearing aid in the left ear: 24%
• Single words with hearing aid in the right ear: 0%
• Sentences with both hearing aids together: 88%

After the implant:

• Sentences with the hearing aid in the left ear: 92% (what the?? my hearing aid ear has gotten better?)
• Sentences with implant in the right ear: 97% (WOOOOOO HOOOOO!)
  
• Single words with the hearing aid in the left ear: 8% (what the?? my hearing aid ear has gotten worse? HAHA)
• Single words with implant in the right ear: 48% (apparently the average is around 30% after 1 year of wearing implant)
• Sentences with both hearing aid and cochlear implant together in noise: 54% (still a bit hard to hear in noisy situations!)
• With both hearing aid and cochlear implant together for sentences:  … ….   100%

Yes, you read right.

100% correct with both my hearing aid and cochlear implant together.

97% correct just listening with the implanted ear.

So….

how about that!?

It has been a success.

Best thing is it has started to sound really normal.

People are still robots, but it just sounds … normal … and fine!

Inside I am sighing with relief, no, mentally squealing with joy …  and amazed at my journey to this point.

Last night I went out to dinner with my mum and my little brother Hayden. The thing that stood out for me most was in the car driving to and from the restaurant, I sat looking out the window while mum and Hayden talked (Hayden driving, mum in the back seat! [sorry mum!]).

(Whenever we drive together, my family always lets me sit up the front, so I can be more included in the conversation, as it’s easier to turn around to lip-read someone in the front seat than to do that from the back seat. I have a wonderful, wonderful family.)

And do you know what?

I didn’t look at either of them – I was gazing out the window – … and I heard every single thing they said…

Wow.

The interesting thing is – sometimes when this happens, I don’t feel this huge web of joy like I did in the first couple of weeks… sometimes I feel a bit sad or melancholy that life seemed so much harder before I got the implant. It’s like I just look back and think, wow, life actually was quite difficult.

I realise now that people with normal hearing just lead such relaxing, easy lives.

And then I also think about the people that might not have such a good outcome as me with their own cochlear implant, or people who don’t qualify for a cochlear implant.

And I feel quite sad. Just because it doesn’t seem fair that I might have such a good outcome, and other people might not.

I guess the only way to get around this feeling for me will be to promise myself that no matter how good my hearing gets, to never stop my personal fight for the things that make life easier and more equal for deaf people: captioning, hearing aids, affordable hearing services, Auslan taught in schools, teaching support in schools, understanding of communication needs, mentoring and support, the list just goes on and on.

I guess it will be a never-ending fight.

But hooray for 100 per cent speech perception test results! Feel like I should have been presented with an award or something.

 

4 weeks after switch on – I went to the cinema!

Before I start on telling you what I am hearing now, I want to just waffle on about something else for a second!

The best thing about this blog for me…

The very best thing about this blog for me has been the parents from around the world that have either emailed me or left comments on my posts, telling me how this blog has enabled them to understand a bit more what it is like for their own hearing impaired baby or toddler – and maybe allows them to kind of ‘experience’ what it must be like as a kid to have a cochlear implant.

Because you can’t really ask a 9 month old baby, “How does it feel?” or “What exactly are you hearing?”

Imagine:

Baby: “Well Mum? Your voice really sounds sooooo stoopid when you coo to me and talk in ‘mumsy gibberish’. Stop that, I aint a baby! Oh, hang on … I AM a baby. Whatever.”

The comment that really struck me was one from Iman (at the end of my previous post). It really made me feel like awwwww! I mean, imagine being a mum to a baby with an implant – it is, in some ways, kind of heart rending, you know, like as a mother, you just want to be able to know and understand how your child is feeling – so I felt really good that maybe that’s what my blog was doing – giving a tiny little voice to babies out there that have cochlear implants – see Iman’s comment below:

i gave birth to my third child, 19 months ago and he was born hearing impaired, with profound hearing loss. he has had the implant for a year now and he is doing really good but he has difficulty sleeping at night, he will sit in his bed for hours during the night awake and talking to himself and i never understood why. when reading your blog about how you would still hear noises even when the processor was off, it made sense. i would love to know how it gets down the track.
Iman

So that was totally mega cool, and really made my day.

As for an update on what I am hearing now, see below:

8 weeks since surgery, 4 weeks since switch on … What can I hear now?

Well, it is amazing – it sounds much more natural now.

Audio book

On the plane home from Queensland on Sunday night, I plugged myself (using the Cochlear Personal Audio cable) into Ben’s iRiver ipod thing.

He had to show me how to use it – I am so totally web savvy and tech savvy, but when it comes to things that only produce sound, I have never used them!

And I listened to my audio book that Ben had downloaded for me.

I could hear it so clearly, even with the roar of the jet engines in the background. I was truly amazed. I flipped through the book, kept finding the pages I was up to, and then decided it was too easy following along with the book.

And I leant back, and listened to the story with my eyes closed!  *sigh*

Conversations without lipreading!

At home last night while cooking dinner, Ben and I had a full conversation without me looking at him. As we were preparing stuff in the kitchen, he was telling me the synopsis of this new series on TV called “The Last Enemy”, and it had some weird futuristic bizarre plot-line involving biotechnological diseases and government espionage – the usual.

The only reason I realised that I was listening to him without looking at him was because Ben stopped talking mid-sentence, and said in his best hurt voice: “Well, if you’re not interested, I’ll stop telling you!”

And I looked up, and said “I AM listening!” And we both realised that because I wasn’t facing him, he thought I couldn’t hear him!!!!!

We both had these huge grins on our faces!

So the rest of the conversation, Ben said to me “You have to say ‘yes? yes?’ after each sentence so I feel like you can hear what I am saying!”

It was hilarious.

Our conversation was tainted by those typical broad Aussie accents where everything ends in a question:

Ben: “So there’s this disease outbreak that was hidden by the Government?”
Kate: “Yes?”
Ben: “And the brother of the bio-terrorist scientist gets blown up by a land mine?”
Kate: “Yes?”
Ben: “but then he comes back from the dead, because he didn’t really die, he just faked his death?
Kate: “Yes?”

It might not sound like it, but to me it was a wonderfully satisfying conversation!

I went to the Cinema!

Oh, and I went to a movie at the cinema for the first time since I was about 24 years old – a movie without subtitles I mean.

So, it’s been 6 years since I have seen a normal movie at the cinema.

I was with my three girlfriends, we were having a girls weekend at the Gold Coast, and were killing time at Pacific Fair before our flight left.

And we decided to see ‘District 9′, (I don’t know WHAT we were thinking – it’s about Aliens and things getting blown up).

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to hear much, but I was amazed that I managed to get maybe 75 per cent of the movie! There were lots of moments when people shouted something as they were blown up, or mutilated, or maybe there was a voice-over during a shoot-out – these ones I had trouble hearing – but the majority of it I could hear!

When we came out of the cinema, I was so excited, and said to the girls: “Man, I could hear almost everything, I understood it all! This is great! The only thing I didn’t get was – why was the guy smiling when was blowing up the alien’s babies? I must’ve missed something there.”

And they were like: “Ah – we didn’t get that either. No idea!”

HAHA!

So there you go.

This scientific invention, the cochlear implant, is ACTUALLY WORKING!!!!

 

How does it sound now?

Amazingly, now, the sound is much more normal than it was in the first 2 weeks. Less robot, more normal but echoey.

Some cool (and not so cool) things that I have noticed in the 3 weeks since being switched on:

• I can walk home from work with both the hearing aid and cochlear implant switched on. Traffic noise doesn’t bother me as much anymore. Before the implant, I always walked home with both my hearing aids switched off, because the traffic noise gave me headaches, even when I turned the sound right down.

• I don’t get headaches as much as I used to – I am not sure why – I suspect it’s because the hearing aids were just amplifying the noise, and so my eardrum was constantly being bombarded with incredibly loud noise, 12 hours a day, or however long I had them switched on. Now, because the implant seems to by-pass everything, I just don’t get those headaches anymore. This also means I am less tired.

• I still don’t really like the feeling of the implant under the skin on my head. Sometimes I can still feel the electrodes in my cochlear – I know a lot of people would say, there is no way you can feel them in there – but if I have had a stressful day, and my head felt a bit thick, like I had flu coming on or something – and I could feel the implant moving

• Probably the most annoying thing about the cochlear implant is the size of the processor and the coil attachment. It always gets in the way – I didn’t realise how much I played with my own hair until I got it! I will probably have to get a different hair cut, because it’s too difficult to get my hair behind my ears – and the cord won’t let that happen anyway. So that’s a bit annoying. But hey – I would put up with a lot more than this to be able to hear as well as I am hearing now.

• I am still saying “What?” a lot – but sometimes out of habit! Like, I will hear something, but it’s just become such a normal thing for me, or, I can’t really believe that I have heard something, it’s like a reflex action. It means I am having to rethink my reactions to things.

• People seem to be more open to me since the implant – possibly because of the media coverage, possibly because of the blog – but people seem to feel like they know me better, and so have been telling me secrets or things about themselves that have not told me before, and also things that they haven’t told anyone. And often these are things that have been painful in their lives. I really feel for people when they tell me these things. It’s a weird situation, but one I am very happy about.

 

3 weeks after switch on: Today I did something I haven’t done before

At work today, I tried out one of the accessories that comes with the cochlear implant – the personal audio cable.

This is the cable that comes with the processor - it is amazing because it means that the sound goes direct into your cochlear implant, and you can hear it really clearly.

You plug it into your laptop, ipod, computer, or TV – anything with headphone jack basically – and the sound goes direct into your cochlear implant.

I wanted to try and see if I could hear the videos that I work with at work – I upload lots, because I am an Online Content Manager – and usually I get someone else to listen to them if the content is important.

Well, today … I plugged in the cable, switched it on, and pressed play.

And I could hear it.

I could hear AND understand almost every word that was said. And the amazing thing was, I was only using the implanted ear, not my other ear with the hearing aid.

I was listening with only one ear, and for the first time in a long time, I was understanding a video without captions.

I had a little cry over my keyboard at my desk. This is the first time the cochlear implant has actually moved me to tears.

For me, the cochlear implant is … just so good …  such an improvement on my old hearing … and that makes me feel a bizarre mix of sad and happy. Happy because of what has opened up for me … and sad for my previous self that struggled for so long, and resigned herself to being left out of certain things.

So, I just had a good cry while I listened to our CEO discuss financial figures for the year and how important insurance is for small businesses in the face of climate change.

*sigh*

Who would’ve thought such a boring topic could elicit such a response.