Wow, some amazing changes over these past weeks as my sense of normal operations expands and others seem to rely on me more and barely to give it a second thought.
But what if I had a flat?
We all pack spare tires in our cars. As rare as flat tires are, we all know they happen – it’s not if, just when.
And I’m already considering when I might get a second implant.
It’s so expensive, and people wonder if it’s worth it. Certainly it’s not as earth-shattering as the first! It’s true. Though the benefits of hearing in stereo aren’t trivial - like being able to locate the source of a sound, and even better comprehension of speech – I think the spare tire effect is the more critical.
As well as I’m hearing today, what would I do if I had a malfunction, or my implant shifted, and I was suddenly plunged into complete deafness? These scenarios are not unknown among implantees. My deafened coping mechanisms have been repressed for awhile now. The result of a sudden shutdown today would feel catastrophic, with a lot of confusion for myself and those around me.
In my line of work, one of the concepts that’s central to keeping things running constantly is to avoid a “single point of failure”. In other words, everything that could break down has a backup, because it probably will break eventually.
For me, this implant is now a single point of failure in my daily function, and with all its new and happy benefits, it actually remains the source of a bit of angst.
