How Activation went: Activation meant having my processor connected to the computer and indicating what was soft, comfortable, loud, and too loud. I had no trouble with “soft” as this was ripples on a quiet lake. Comfortable, Loud & Too Loud were difficult to determine. The audiologist repeatedly said she not want me to hurt, but without a pain threshold to go by, I decided the cut off point was when sounds ran through my eyeballs. Some people get dings, beeps, or actual hearing the first day. I had wrinkles. And silvery stars. Sounds stimulated electrical impulses which translated into silvery stars that pierced my cranium. Basically I heard wrinkles. Some wrinkles had a hard spike, others were just spikes. Each wrinkle was the same as one before. It was a good first day in that I had no headaches.
Day Two we again went through soft, comfortable, loud, & too loud to reset volume settings louder. I decide too loud is when I hear or feel the impulses in my cheekbones. I went to my parents for my first therapy session. They both read two short children’s stories, their fingers trailing the words as they spoke. I was encouraged that I could hear the difference between “waddle” from “paddle” considering that both are very similar in spelling and have the same number of syllables. However by evening I was woefully sick with dizziness and I spent the entire weekend recuperating. An inquiry to the cochlear implant forum yielded suggestions: don’t wear the implant so much in the beginning. Do not wear it in noisy environments. Turn down the volume to the point I cannot hear anything. I tried the latter on Saturday. For fifteen minutes nothing spiked in my head. Then the fairies came out, and they skated gracefully across my cranium. After another fifteen minutes I bumped up the volume. The stars stormed the realm, piercing my head. I felt nauseous and delighted; the Too Loud threshold has been located.
