11 weeks

I have turned on my cur­rent pro­gramme a week before it was planned. Here goes the story.

Two months after the switch on I real­ized that I don’t have ver­tigo. It was gone. The visit to the implan­ta­tion cen­tre was due in short time, so I asked for repro­gram­ming to make the low sounds louder. I got an inter­me­di­ate pro­gramme, which was sup­posed to last me 2–3 weeks, and another one for longer (plus ADRO to try after 3–4 weeks of using the lat­ter pro­gramme). I thought that I would have more time with one pro­gramme to get used to. No way. After a week, I went to the per­for­mance of Yam­ato. Japan drum­mers. They are great. I rec­om­mend the show. And I can hear the drums very well… with the hear­ing aid. With my CI only I could still rec­og­nize the rhytm, but it was just not the same. The low sounds sucked. So I turned on the next pro­gramme, two weeks ahead of sched­ule. The drums were much bet­ter after that. I hadn’t got tin­ni­tus after this and I hadn’t felt like I had been hit on the head with a big, big sponge, like it had been at the beginning.

I lis­ten to the low sounds for almost two weeks now. It is hard some­times. The new coworker in my room is so loud. No, he is not mis­be­hav­ing. I just hear every sound his chair makes, not to men­tion the key­board and every­thing else. The chair is pretty loud. For a few days I could not con­cen­trate on any­thing. I think I am get­ting used to it, though. But I see that the silent places are rare in this world. I won­der how will my audio­gram look the next time.

I am try­ing to do some train­ing by myself. I lis­ten to music and to an audio­book. I got a CD with the “sounds of envi­ron­ment” and another with some recorded exer­cises. In short, there are the pairs of phrases dif­fer­ing only by one sound, for exam­ple t/d. I just lis­ten to it and read the list.

I went to the speech ther­a­pist today for hear­ing exer­cises. The ses­sion lasted an hour and I felt like my brain was being kneaded. Lis­ten­ing, in pas­sive mode, is some­thing else. When I have to actu­ally guess what I hear, some unused and rusty parts of my brain are forced to work. It can be exhaust­ing. The results were not so bad as I had expected, but I have a long way to go.