Hearing Progress: The fairies no longer skate. They stomp with merciless glee. The volume has been turned down yet even more so that my cranium does not quiver in pain. I still hear nothing. In the mornings I must take care to turn down the volume completely prior to putting on the implant. This gives my brain time to wake up and adjust to electrical impulses. My brain usually respond with a happy tingle. The first two weeks nights were bliss. After all day of tolerating impulses, my brain was tired and I slept soundly. I could feel the connection fading away to nothing and I imagine the tendrils pulling away & curling onto themselves to wither and die. Just when I was thinking this was an excellent sleeping pill, the brain turns temperamental on me. It calls forlornly for the implant. The first night I recite the longest poem I know, “the walrus & the carpenter” but my brain refuses to be distracted and I give up. I lie quietly for an hour & a half listening to it weep before it quiets enough for me to fall sleep. I marvel that it took only a few weeks for me to regard my brain as a separate entity. I now have to remove the implant for a half hour before bedtime in hopes that my brain copes with the loss and settle down so I can sleep.
Therapy: A new component has been added. Because sounds are not registering in my brain, I need to “etch a groove” by listening to the same list of words until my brain can hear them. The tecno-geeko man in my household converted .wav files into MP3’s and loaded them onto my palm. There is two minutes of audio on my play list: the animal sounds my parents pull off the net and three sound clips from the manufacturer’s website. I have the play list on continuous loop, directly plugged into my processor. The irony of this therapy is the need to constantly check that the palm is still playing. I cannot hear. I must verify that the battery on my implant is charged up, the volume set, and the palm is charged up, the music program is playing on continuous loop, & its volume is set. Listening for my brain’s tingling has proven unreliable. It tingles with joy at sounds coming in, and it tingles unhappily when the program stops. I hope soon I can tell the difference between the two tingling. Two weeks of 3 hours plus listening to the MP3 every day may have encouraged the odd physical sensation I now have behind my ear down my neck. I remember as a youngster having ear aches that extended down that area, but I did not realize that area also involves hearing. I am hoping this is an indication that the auditory nerve is waking up.
Tingling versus Wrinkles: I see I am changing how I describe the sounds as I write this. Wrinkles = disruptions of silence. Tingles = pleasure at sounds or unhappiness with the lack thereof.
The primary contact at the forum (which is sponsored by the manufacturer) says it will be six months to a year before I can hear. Others at the forum who started the same way I did say they started to hear something at three months.
