1 Month Post Surgery

To start, I have a request for those responsible for issuing the season's cold viruses: Stop! Enough already.

I am pretty well healed up from surgery. The incision scar looks good and most of the dermabond gunk has come off. My ear is just about back to its former position. For the past couple of weeks I am getting more sensation where some skull bone was removed to countersink the implant. It is not painful -- just a minor ache at times. I think I still have some slight drainage from the middle ear through the Eustachian Tube. But since I also still have a minor taste disturbance as well I am not completely sure. The left side of my tongue is mildly tingly and tastes are off on that side. It has improved since the surgery and I expect it will resolve soon. I occasionally have a slight sensation of fullness in my implanted ear. Whether it is due to the surgery or the ridiculous number of colds I'm getting I just don't know. Most of the vertigo and balance issues are gone, but I still don't feel completely back to normal. It is most noticeable when I'm moving around a lot -- just a tinge of a woozy feeling in my head. I suspect if I wasn't having to restrict my activities due to these darned bugs I would be over it by now.

It has been about two and a half weeks since my activation. I've noticed a good deal of improvement over that time. Everything is sounding more natural and I am amazed at how much I am hearing. Pitch is still lower than "normal" but I think that might be changing. Voices known to me such as my wife and boy sound closer to normal, and I am understanding more men's voices which are the most troublesome. If I stick my hearing aid in my right ear I think it is sounding higher than normal. It's hard to tell at this time and frankly I'm not quite sure what the hell is going on as far as the pitch goes.

I have more tinnitus in my right ear than normal. It is like it is complaining about not getting enough stimulation, since I'm not wearing its hearing aid. Either that or not liking its role reversal from dominant ear to subordinate. When I do put the hearing aid in on occasion it sounds loud, gritty and tinnier -- not nearly as clear and responsive as my renewed left ear.

Music still sounds marginally listenable at best. At the start of our road trip for Christmas my wife played a greatest hits assortment of David Bowie on the car stereo. It sounded like covers of Bowie with a deeper-voiced singer, like Andrew Eldritch of Sisters of Mercy! Some songs sounded okay and were recognizable like The Jean Genie and Ashes to Ashes. Others like Heroes sounded pretty awful. What was really bizarre and kind of funny was if we turned the volume up to the point where I could hear it with my right ear as well: it sounded like a strange harmonized duet because of the pitch difference from each ear. Weird.

We had a great time visiting our families. I've long had trouble holding any kind of meaningful conversation with my father and his brother as they are both soft-spoken. Christmas dinner has always been a time of interesting and often funny stories and it has just killed me to miss out on that more and more over the years. I think my first comment at dinner was, "you all are really noisy eaters." To which my uncle replied something like, "well, you've been awfully quiet the past ten years or so." So true. This year was definitely a step in the right direction. I could follow most everything said, with only an occasional request for repetition or help from my wife. And because I was able to actively follow the conversation I could jump in as well. It was really nice to do that. That alone was worth price of admission to the CI Club. I think it is quite hard for normal hearing people to imagine the affects of profound hearing loss. Isolation, disconnection and just feeling like an absolute idiot in the midst of conversation. I feel lucky that I was activated so soon after surgery, in time for the holidays. The only down side was that I still get worn out from the CI before bedtime and had to take it off before we were all done talking. But it was a good reminder of how much better the CI is -- with my hearing aid conversations were loud but I couldn't follow a damn one when we were sitting in a group. I could only converse closely one-on-one with certain people like my mom and sister, and even that was a struggle.

On a final note, I had another good CI experience. Our HD-DVD copy of the Blade Runner 5-disc collector edition arrived last week. We've watched the Final Cut version, the Dangerous Days documentary and most of the other featurettes. It is so cool to not completely depend on captions or subtitles! I am catching a great deal of dialog now. I still need the captions on occasion but I can mostly keep my eyes on the movie now. I used to get really pissed off when special content on DVDs was not captioned. They are usually interviews with crappy sound quality and I could rarely follow any of it without captions. Other than the five Blade Runner versions and Dangerous Days, none of the added material on this disc set is captioned. I still think that sucks, but with my CI I can now understand the majority of it -- that's a huge change for me. And for the record, Blade Runner looks extraordinary in Hi-Def. One of my favorite movies.

I have my 3rd mapping this coming Wednesday. I run most of the time at the normal 12:00 volume position. I'm still liking HiRes-S better at this stage (I am not sure that would be the case if the pitch was closer to normal). I don't think I'll need a lot of adjustment this time. But who knows what my audiologist has in store for me?

I'm sure this will be my last post for 2007, so... Happy New Year!!