Not a Day Without a New Discovery

The day of my next surgery is drawing nearer!  June 8th at 8 am! (Yes, I am very excited!!)

I wanted to share some discoveries that keep happening.  Did you know that there is a storm siren near my office?  Of course you didn’t – and neither did I until the most recent storm when it went off.  And…I heard it while sitting at my desk inside the office.

There is also a noon-time siren that goes off daily that I had no idea about – so cool!

The pouring rain sounds very loud on the roof of our office.  If it wasn’t for the Spring storms we have endured, I probably wouldn’t have known it yet.

This next discovery may be a little difficult to explain, so hang in there with me.  When I wore hearing aids, I ended almost every day physically tired and I couldn’t wait to “unplug” as I called it – taking the hearing aids off for the day.  I looked forward to the time of silence so I could relax.  I know that the hearing fatigue is real and I’m sure that I’m not alone in looking forward to the time of peacefulness in my day.

I am much less tired at the end of the day now – much less.  More amazing to me, though, is that when I take off the cochlear implant hardware at the end of the day it’s almost a let down that I go into a time of silence.  The world isn’t as “noisy” as it was with hearing aids.  I can hear so much more clearly that I don’t have to pay nearly as much attention to keep up with what’s going on around me.  It is so difficult to fully explain, but it amazes me how close to hearing without any assistive devices was and it’s the naturalness that makes going into a world of silence an adjustment at first each day.  I still do enjoy the silence, but it’s not the “relief” that it once was.

I’ve probably mentioned before that I believe the fact that hearing aids are noisy is why a lot of older people won’t wear them.  They are taken to get them by a loving family member who believes that mom or dad, grandma or grandpa want to hear better.  I’d guess that they would like that as well, but when weighing the adjustment to a noisy world against not hearing as good as they want, a more peaceful world wins most of the time and another expensive paid of hearing aids finds themselves sentenced to life in a drawer somewhere.

One of the funniest things that is happening now is when people don’t think I can hear them because I’m not looking at them, which had become my “norm” for several months.  I’ve surprised several people, fortunately none who were saying anything negative.  While I still need to pay attention to some degree, I can definitely be looking at my computer screen or writing notes on paper and still be a part of almost all conversations.  That has added tremendously to my productivity, and my confidence in most settings.

Stay tuned…the best is yet to come!