Activation Day

This is where the rubber hits the road.  No surgery is to be taken lightly, of course, but any physical problems or complications that might have arisen would have been apparent before now.

A few idle weeks passed while waiting for activation.  It was set up similar to a hearing aid visit, of which I've had many, but my anticipation was really focused on this event.

The first sounds were from test tones to learn the minimum signal I could detect at different frequencies.  Immediately afterwards, I was inundated with a whirling barrage of sound that reminded me of '60s psychedelic music. I tried to describe it while I was sitting there waiting for the next step in the process; where do they come up with these nutty test sounds, anyway?

At one point I tried to describe a hissing I'd heard.  I said "ssss".  I heard "ssss".   What?!?  My audi was speaking, and suddenly as I stopped talking and focused on her lips, I realized that the rhythm of the psychedelia was coming from her.  No way!  Things jumbled round, made new connections, and suddenly I was hearing her speaking, and understanding it.  The noise made sense now, but it was as if I hadn't been listening -- it seemed like background noise coming from all the wrong places that I was blocking subconsciously.  Once the realization hit my brain that "hey, this actually means something," it clicked into place almost immediately!

Ten minutes later I'm conversing with my audi and her assistant, listening to blind test vocabulary and repeating back, oh, about 80% of it (can't get the "G" sound for some reason), and everyone is pretty tickled with the outcome.  I know I am.

Over the next couple weeks, I'm plugging myself into everything I can.  TV, captions off.  Receptionist calling on the speaker phone.  Practicing phone calls to recorded messages, the more different voices, the better.  Music in the car.  Music plugged into my cell phone.  First meeting in the conference room - I had CART to fall back on, because we didn't know what results to expect, and it was important. I'm glad I had it to get over that hump, but it turned out to be a good meeting.  I was having a conversation!

And days later, my first group conference call; five of us, speaker phone and two more on the other end.  Feeling a new ease with myself among friends and colleagues, like the old days, and able to discuss things with them in a meaningful way.  That has really been my breakthrough experience.