Time flies

Okay, July 16th has come and gone.

That was the date of turning on my implant. And I am still not sure if it was successful... =/ makes me quite worried.

But anyways, I'll tell you about how the day went. Headed to the hosptial in the morning, and waited till my audiologist got me.

He started off by checking with me if everything went well and etc etc. They did. =)

And we went right to it... after tons of opening boxes and taking the plastic off of individual containers and numerous remarks saying 'why are they destroying the environment with all this plastic!?' we finally get my device out and put together. He did not turn it on right away and had to do some tests. The first test was tough for me, since it was pretty much turned on and was testing to make sure all of the individual nodes inside my cochlear on the wire thingy was functioning. It was a hard test on my head because it just sounded like really strong sensations being shocked into my head. Not like a static shock, but like a sound shock. After a while my whole head was booming and my heart started racing. I was kind of freaking out at that point because I thought that was what I was hearing and it wasn't anything specifc. Finally he stopped that after I was in a lot of pain via my head.
The second test was a test of beeping. I basically had to listen for beeping at different tones, most were soft to figure out how quiet I could hear things. I tried my best with it but after a while I felt like I wasn't hearing anything and making it up in my head.

After he did that, he said that he can turn it on and I'll hear what everyone's voices are like. He does... at first... I hear nothing. Just feeling a weird sensation. He tells me it's at a low volume and that he needs to increase it until i feel comfortable and can hear voices. Increasing... more and more... I barely hear anything. I'm mostly in shock at this point of how it is not what I was expecting at all. The sounds aren't the same as what I heard with a hearing aid.

I finally found a volume level that my head was comfortable with and could hear everyone talking in that small office. But at the same time, I really did not know what I was really hearing. The voices do sound cartoonish right now, and it's mad weird.

However now i have become worried that it is not working the way it's supposed to... like did i mess up on that second test and make myself think that I really was able to hear now? Over the course of 2 days since then, I feel like I am not really hearing anything. I have my hearing aid in the left ear helping me maintain some level of hearing that i am used to but if i have only the implant on... i can't really hear anything, just keep getting a weird sensation on my head from the magnet sending electrical currents to my cochlear/brain. I have been continuing to increase the volume and move through 4 programs that my audiologist set up for me to get used to a more normal level of functionality on the cochlear implant.

The only major difference that I have noticed is that I am hearing music more clearly now. Like I can actually pick out the moments when someone is singing, and I am trying to pick out the words but it's not so easy. Before the implants, I could only listen to music through it's beat and rhythm rather than the actual lyrics which i could never really hear.

Crossing my fingers at this point that this worry goes away quickly and I can improve slash get used to this implant quickly. If the worry doesn't go away quickly I probably will start to regret all of this and be in a terrible mood for days. So nobody wants that... =(

Anyways,
it's tough for me to describe all of it... like i cannot find the right words at all to make it make sense to everyone. Not even my mom understands what is really going on in my head right now. I hope I can find the words to describe it and will post a new blog when I figure it out.

Night ya'll,
-Annie