My job

I realized something today, while I was at work.

I work at the textbook annex on my campus, and I am a cashier, the first type of job I've ever had that involves interacting with customers constantly. I first started this job back in the fall, and was so nervous about my people skills. I remember that I would always get flustered when I actually need to listen to them when I was asking for their information such as phone number and name, etc. If I could not understand them, I started panicking sometimes and just resorting to having them write down their numbers and all that information. Most of the time, I hated being at work because I did not like how nervous I got and how flustered I was with customers. Sure I was new at this, but I still felt that way at the end of working there for two weeks. I kind of wish that I had been working there with both hearing aids, just to know how difficult it would be for me to do all that I do with customers.

But my point is, I realized today, that my cochlear implant has helped me tremendously when it comes to interacting with strangers and asking for their phone numbers and trying to help them when they need it. My confidence level has improved in how my skills are for dealing with customers, like the past two days of work has been good, where I am not having much difficulties with customers, I have not resorted to using pen and paper just to find out something simple like a phone number.

Also, it has been interesting being back at work because at my job, there's always new people every day, and it's fun to get to know a lot of people, even though i may not see them again. I've been talking to a few of them about my hearing loss, and I've been hearing about how other people know certain deaf people and how other deaf people function in the world. One coworker was telling me about how she was in a class, and there was a deaf person there who had an interpreter and she thought it was fascinating how fast the person could sign, and told me of one time where they went to a place, and it had a lot of machinery in the background, and nobody in the class could understand what the professor was saying, and yet the deaf person knew what the professor was saying because the interpreter was standing right next to the professor and could translate everything for him to understand while the rest of the class just stood there clueless of what the heck the professor was saying.

But anyways, I just felt like saying something random and telling everyone about my realization. The other thing I want to mention is that I found another book that is a memoir by a deaf person that seems like it would be interesting to read. I have tried reading "the unheard" by Josh Swiller which I never finished... maybe someday. But the other memoir that I found is called "What's that pig outdoors?" by Henry Kisor, who is a deaf journalist, and it looks like an interesting read, so I may pick it up soon and start reading at it.

That's all for now,

next appointment at the hospital isn't until March, so who knows when the next time I'll post on here,

until then-

-Annie

First post of 2011!

So it's been about 5 months since the implant was turned on. On Wednesday before Christmas I went for my 3 month check up appointment at the hospital with Mark. This visit wasn't any different than the rest, it's becoming more stable when it comes to the tests.

However, having a stable progress with my implant is good, it means I am not getting worse over time, and is moderately just improving my comfortably of using them and understanding people.

There were a few differences with this particular appointment due to how I brought along someone new to it, who did not really know anything about the process or the implant's progress beforehand besides what I had told him, and that person was my boyfriend. He has always been interested in my hearing loss and how I function with the implant and my hearing aid in my left ear, and I thought it would be a good experience for him to actually meet my audiologist Mark and see what it is that I go through every appointment.

I always always always forget how exhausting it is to go to my audiologist appointments. We do our tests in the booth, which is a sound proof room and I am isolated in there with a glass view of my audiologist in the other room doing the tests through the computers and all the equipments. Usually that portion of the appointment takes about 20 minutes to 40 minutes depending on how frustrated and tired I get from repeating back words and using my listening skills... It's obvious how weak my listening skills are when it is tiring to be doing it for a good amount of time. By listening skills, I mean without any visual cues at all... which I pretty much rely on all the time! Therefore, my seeing skills and lipreading skills are awesome. =P Anyways, in there, we did our usual whole routine of me repeating back a word from a tape player of a man's voice saying "ready" then "ball" all that jazz. I still loathe that test... but as I took it this time around, I felt like I did a better job where I did not have as much frustration of trying to figure out what was said and seemed to get more words correct this time around, and yet Mark tells me I'm still stable! He frustrates me! haha. But it is progress towards better due to how comfortable I am getting with the sounds I hear through my implant and seem to have a better ease with how my listening is with it.

I still think that I have a severe to profound hearing loss, but in reality, I don't anymore. I pretty much wear my implant at least 16 hours of the day, and only take it off when I am sleeping. In the majority of my life, I am functioning as a person with a mild hearing loss, and that's it. I hear all of the little sounds now, like the other day I noticed that I heard the timer in the kitchen go off when I was in the living room with the tv on loud and the fireplace blower going... I couldn't believe it when my mom was like, did you just hear that? Because I had heard it without even thinking about it and reacted to it, and I wasn't like focusing on trying to hear it when it went off. Usually when I am cooking something and walk off to another part of the house, I have to try to keep the fact that I am cooking in the front of my mind and not get distracted by anything, but I don't really have to do that much anymore due to how I can hear the little noises that will alert me to the fact I am still cooking. I make tea every day with a tea kettle, and the high pitched noise was always too high for me to hear through my hearing aids without really focusing onto the sound. This is a great benefit for me to have my implant now because now I have a little less to worry about as I embark onto towards a life on my own away from my supportive parents who always gets me out of trouble... I've already had an incident of nearly burning down the house a few times... the one time my parents wasn't there, I caught the tea kettle on fire... oops. And that was all happening pre-implant.

Anyways... I ramble. Back to the appointment, at least what I can remember of it since it happened quite a while ago, right before the holidays. OH! this is the first post of the year! =D happy new years to everyone by the way.

After the tests in the booth, we went into Mark's office and did the adjustments which seemed to take forever, Mark had another audiologist shadowing him showing him the equipments and how to run the programs... and seemed to prolong the process of everything. He had me do the beeping test, where I count out how many beeps I hear, from 1 to 5 in a row. Usually that process is quick, and the point of it is to see how high of a sound I can hear to the lowest sound I can hear and develop a range of sounds that I am able to hear and get an idea of what the programs should allow, where it allows as much possibility for me to hear all kinds of noises, from high to low. While Mark was showing the program to the other guy, my boyfriend was also inching over to see what he was doing too while I'm tired and cranky about doing more tests... haha. But I'm glad he came with me to the appointment and could see everything that I go through, and also it was the second deaf person he was meeting, Mark is also deaf with two cochlear implants which makes him a really awesome audiologist because he knows what it's like to be me going through all of this. And yes, I was the first deaf person my boyfriend has had the opportunity to meet and get to know. =)

Anyways, that was the highlight of the appointment, then of course I had to go see Dr. Smullen my surgeon since she likes to check in and see how my head and ears are. Takes about 5 minutes... getting a bit repetitive and pointless for me to see her every single time I'm there... So I'm quite unhappy about having to make an appointment with her in three months time. I don't see why I can't just see her the appointment after that, like 6 months from now. My mom is the one who is fighting with me over this, and we'll see what the heck happens with that doctor.

That's all for now I believe, next check up appointment is during my spring break, and it's back to school in two weeks, hopefully my stress won't be so bad this time around where my ears hurt from TMJ (it only comes about when i'm really stressed) or tinnitus (also from stress usually) or whatever life throws at me. I'm having a good life, and is not gonna let anything stop me from having a good life. So take that TMJ =P

Until next time, probably March or so if nothing else major happens to my implant in the time being...
-Annie

Update

There is not much to update on.

Life is busy with school and a boyfriend.

However, I do want to say that I absolutely hate the telecoil button on my implant. I by accident turned it on a few days ago, and was freaking out over the noise that started in my head. It basically was extremely uncomfortable to have such static interference from the number of electric products around me, specifically the tv and the laptop.

I should explain how the telecoil works though... and I have to look this information up after all i never realized how it even works.

Basically the telecoil is a coil of wire inside the hearing aid and my implant. It picks up the magnetic sounds that comes from electrical products such as the telephone and tv. They provide sound through magnets and this is pretty much another way for us deaf people to pick up sounds, instead of using a microphone we are using a telecoil to pick up the sounds that is being projected from the magnet found in the electronics. Cellphones do not have magnets in them, so most of them are not usable with the telecoil setting on our hearing aids and implants, however they have created a way for it to be usable with cellphones, and those phones have a rating of from t1 to t4 which is the best.

Anyways... I'm tired of writing about the telecoil, basically I was just not remembering what it's like to have the telecoil turned on and freaked out over that. It was unusual to be hearing things differently through the implant for once.

The other update that I have is that I'm pretty much reattempting at learning sign language again, my boyfriend asks a lot about it, and I realized that I do not remember a lot and it's useful to quickly just sign something from across the room or in a quiet place such as the library where we are often...

Anyways,

back to the grind.

-Annie

Sound and Beyond

Okay, this computer program is quite hard for a deaf person.

I uploaded a program to my computer called 'Sound and Beyond' and I recall the one thing my audiologist said to me when I got it from him.... "it's hard." And he was right... My audiologist is also deaf, and has two cochlear implants, so I have to take his word for it. He said that it is not an easy program to get through, however it is beneficial in how it works my listening skills. It is an easy thing to do when I am alone in the room with nothing else to do, and being at college, it is not easy to have someone take the time to work on listening with. There are so many other things I rather be doing than working on my listening skills.

But anyways, just this past week I actually got bored enough to try it. It was quite tough to do... and made me realize how much work I need to do in order to get better at listening. The first thing I did in the program was to do the auditory assessment which tested where I am at currently when it comes to my listening skills.

There was three tests, the first one was a pure tone test, where it gave me three sounds, two are the same sound and another is different. I have to pick the one that is different. It was tricky to do that due to how close they sounded... But that was my best test overall compared to the rest that I did after that. Most of the tests in this category, I get around half of them correct.

The second test I did was a grid of words, all similar in sound/saying whatever. This specific one used words that was 'h...d' pretty much, and some were made up which made it harder when I couldn't hear the words before I started, so I kinda had to guess what they would sound like in order to match it. It was like a matching game where I have to pick the word that the computer just said. On that test, I scored a 20 percent.... eh... it was hard... haha.

My third test was worse.... It was also a grid of words, but it was a consonant recognition one, where it had 'aBa' etc... so I have to pick based on the middle sound that I hear. It was a lot harder for me to do this one due to what the choices were, they had 's' 'sh' 'ch' 'th' 'j' which usually all sound similar to me.... But anyways, I scored 15% on that, and that's eh. I can keep working on it though.

This program is tough, but if I do not challenge myself I will not grow in my listening skills and continue at this stable level that I've been at every time I go see Mark, my audiologist. Next time I see him, I'm hoping for an improvement, even if it's marginal.

Anywhoooo, that's my update.

Until next time,

-Annie

Thank You

Thank you,

that's something that I do not say nearly enough to everyone in my life. So I thought I'll take the time now to say my thanks specifically to the people I love.

I do not think I would be having a successful recovery and journey if it wasn't for my parents being there through everything of my entire life. Also I love having all the support of my friends around me, and curious people too helps me continue my process of getting better at hearing.

Over the last few weeks, I've realized how I am as a person which is stubborn... and that has affected how my hearing is. I could say that I got lazy with my hearing, where I just do not try to get better at hearing with my hearing aids and just focused mostly on lip-reading all the time. Which is why this journey with a CI has been difficult for me, I've been put out of my element of depending on lip-reading and trying to listen more. The way I am stubborn is that I hate using any helpful equipment and often had to be bribed into doing so by my mother as I grew up. When I was little, I hated my hearing aids and often pulled them out of my ears. When my mother told me that I'll get treats or rewards for wearing them, I behaved. And that's how I now got used to them and wear them for most of the day.

But I still am stubborn when it comes to using MORE assistive devices such as an FM system. Throughout high school, I rarely used it due to how independent I like to be and also I often do not like being singled out in a classroom, or in the population for that matter. I love being a deaf woman but at the same time, I do not want to be put at a disadvantage right away when someone sees me using an FM system or anything that indicates me to be deaf. I feel like people change their behaviors and how they are speaking in order to accommodate me without even asking me if that's what I want. Like one previous experience was where I went to get a tattoo and I was talking to the receptionist in person at the counter, and she had noticed that I was deaf by seeing the hearing aids and started signing to me instead of speaking to me. Now that was a problem due to how I do not use sign language anymore and I had to just pretend that I could understand what she was signing and lalalala deeda! haha.

Now I'm in college, with a hearing aid and a Cochlear Implant. I have an FM system for my hearing aid... and don't even use it. I know I should be, but once again I have gotten back into that mode of not wanting to be accommodated so excessively. I like to function pretty much like any hearing person, in which I don't even use the Relay or TTY system for phones.... I avoid phones overall. However I did try out something new, the Telecoil button on my implant yesterday. I called my mom and tested it out.... let's just say that it was weird. It reminded me of what things sounded like after I had the implant turned on for the first time... so basically cartoonish voices. And it was just high pitched talking to my mom, after like 2 minutes of talking to her I switched sides and just continued on my hearing aids. It's a lot easier to use it with my hearing aids, even on my left side which isn't that great with phone conversations. Before the cochlear implants, I always used the right side for talking on the phone which was rare. I probably used the phone to call about maybe 15 mins per month. That's it... aka low cellphone bill! besides the texting plan :)

Anyways, back to my original reason for writing this post, I want to thank people. Specifically my family who has been there for me through everything and I love them for their support. Also my friends have been amazing, just being curious about how things are going with my implant and being friends with me through everything. I also have a guy who has been great to me, just trying to make me work at getting better with listening using my implant, he's inspiring me a little. =) Everyone who I have met and known in the past have been following my journey and still is rooting me on, thank you and keep doing it! .... this is the point where I'll be dragged off the stage for going too long on a thank you speech... =P so thank you everyone for being there for me, i love you guys for it and do not know where I'll be without it.

Until next time,

-Annie

New look ;-)

So, another update!

I decided to change the looks, hope you guys like it!

Today I started using the personal audio cable with my implant to connect it to the Ipod! It was kind of weird using it due to how the music is directly in my head, no interference from outside environmental noises. I noticed that I'm still going along with the beats and rhythm like I used to and not really trying to listen to the actual words of the song. It's a bit harder to do that because I feel like the music is now a voice in my head, like it's right there in my head. I am just absorbed in it and is tuning everything out.

The other thing I did today was go to the library on campus, and read. That place is so quiet, that it was relaxing for once, but also useful due to how I could identify sounds more easily. I even turned off my hearing aid, and just listened for any noises. I heard people walking, and I was on the 12th floor... not too many people are around there. I also have been trying to talk to people and listen more with just my cochlear implant. I feel like I've been inspired to try to do better by the time I go back, better than getting 25% of the words right. So I have finally installed a program on my computer called sound and beyond. But I didn't get a chance to use it yet and according to Mark, who has used it, it is hard... So we'll see how I manage with this!

The other thing that I have been noticing more is that when I just wear my hearing aid in my left ear alone, I feel like I do not catch as much as I used to in the past. Maybe this is a good sign that wearing both together is working good for me and that I am relying on my CI more than my hearing aid. But I still do rely heavily on my lip reading skills, and I am trying my best not to do that.

I'm not really sure of what else I feel like telling right now. So for now,

until next time-

-Annie

Clarification

My mother worries. And always gets confused by what I relay from the doctor's sayings. So I feel like some clarification has to be done for the masses.

In my last post, I mentioned how the ear infection has made two of my electrodes malfunction, etc. So I have word for word what my doctor Mark said about those two little dots.

"First, I just want to clarify, the two electrodes in question did not fail, they are still functioning electrodes. However, they are functioning in a way that is different. What can happen is that Anna's perception to sound could possibly change if we continued to allow these electrodes to be active. When I talked with Anna she did not say that she noticed any difference in her perception of sound, and in fact, stated that things continue to improve. Her awareness to sound is still very, very good. She still has all the other electrodes in the cochlea still active and working great. It is just something that we are going to keep our eye on. You ask if this would not negatively affect her performance. The answer is no that it shouldn't. What happens when we turned these two specific electrodes off, we reassigned the information that was going to those two electrodes to other electrodes in her cochlea. Therefore she is not missing any information. "

That's right... my mother went and asked him specifically what was going on with that... and that's the answer she got from him. All positive. Don't worry masses around the world, I am doing quite well in this progress... more uphill than downhills.

That's all I wanted to update on.

Other than that, life continues onward.

-Annie