Stuff

Vel­cro rip­ping.
Some music.
Howl­ing of the brakes in the old bus. Open­ing and clos­ing its door.
My own heels’ pat­ter. In this case I am not sure if I hear or feel this. Maybe it is how it’s sup­posed to be. I begin to be aware of the speech rhytm, even if I don’t hear the vow­els, only feel them.

When I describe sounds, I only want to indi­cate that I hear them with my CI. I don’t yet attempt to dis­crim­i­nate them. I hope this will come later.

Here is a very inter­est­ing video about CI expe­ri­ence. I was asked if the moment of turn­ing the proces­sor on is really so grat­ing on the nerves like it is shown in the video. No, it is not, even dur­ing the first two weeks (and it is the third week for me after the switch-on). But there is some­thing to this pic­ture. Turn­ing the CI on is not painful, but I get a kind of kick inside the head. I agree with Michael Chorost here:

I’ve been asked by sev­eral par­ents whether putting on my CI in the morn­ing is really as intense and dis­ori­ent­ing as the video sug­gests. My answer is, No, it’s not. There’s just a rush­ing sound as the device boots up, and then I can hear as the audi­tory world emerges around me. It’s not painful in any way. I think the video is really refer­ring to what it’s like in the first week or two after acti­va­tion, when the sounds and sen­sa­tions are very unfa­mil­iar indeed. But even then, I never found it painful. Just strange. Very, very strange.

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One Response to Stuff

  1. zoe says:

    Hi there

    Read­ing your blog today and I came across this post. I found it fas­ci­nat­ing as I had for­got­ten that when I first had my proces­sor I used to feel the intense crackle and dis­ori­en­tat­ing sounds as the dish attached itself to my head. Some­times I would almost dread the first few moments of turn­ing it on for the first few sec­onds — although it was not really a pain feel­ing like a cut or graze. More like the cen­tre of my brain was being over­loaded with sounds that would even­tu­ally cause a headache if it did not stop.

    It has been nearly two years since I have had the proces­sor and I am not really sure when it stopped feel­ing like that and started feel­ing just like turn­ing on the hear­ing aid. These days I don’t have to wait a moment for that sound to go away — I just start hearing.

    I think this feel­ing is down to nerves mis­fir­ing in the early stages of wear­ing the proces­sor and the brain gets use to it and stops doing this.

    You sound like your doing very well and its great to be able to read your blog!

    best wishes

    zoe

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