Birds....

I am making such progress with the CI that I am trying hard not to get ahead of myself. My speech and language therapist at the RNTNE Hospital tells me not to run before I can walk, but the running ahead is fun. Now that I can hear conversation after one mapping session (one delayed courtesy of an illness for me that kept me confined to bed and off work), I've been consciously pressing the boundaries - listening to speech radio (BBC Radio 4 has the most wonderful afternoon plays), listening to spoken word recordings and following the text in a book and watching TV with the subtitles off, all with the intention of pushing me be less reliant on visual clues.

However, I have hit a small stumbling block in the mottled, feathered form of a bird regularly chirping outside my window at home. Now I know that birds are loud and that the human ear has come to, as it were, recess the sound; but the CI can't do that on it's own. At the moment I am trying to get to grips with a world in which the sound of a bird chirping can prevent me hearing other things and find a way of getting the brain to recess the sound. It'll come. I know it will. Until then, if anyone knows of a humane, efficient bird silencer, I am in the market for one...

Activation day

Just returned from activation and, I have to say, I am getting SO MUCH from the CI that I can't quite believe it...and all after four hours. Voices, trains, doors, levers, footsteps but, most important of all, the sound of my son Alex speaking to me. Four hours. Advanced Bionics, you have my profound admiration.

Blogging again soon, but for now it feels like the hope has returned.

Next day: ...and the wonders continue. I am hearing so much without any adjustment beyond the setup that it is quite unreal. I have just (and I can't quite believe it myself) had a meeting in the covered quadrangle of one of the main university buildings - a bustling meeting place if ever there was one - and held a perfectly good conversation with a colleague without lipreading on my part. I am astounded. The train journey to work was a little surreal (trains passing my train sounded quite eerie!) and the swish of cars reminded me of Michael Chorost's comment that, after his switch on, that was one of the things that impressed him.