It’s now about three weeks since I’ve been wearing my cochlear implant transmitter--and I’m beginning to wonder: at what point will weekly updates about that topic get boring and repetitive? For that reason, I’ve put those words in parentheses this week, and may shorten the title of these entries to just “update,” given that there are other things worth noting--even in my life! For instance: this week marks my sixth anniversary of working at CCB; I am still in disbelief that I have the privilege of working with all of you, residents and colleagues alike, and am so grateful for everything you’ve given me.
As regards the implant, I will persist at least this week, given that I’m still hearing more than I ever imagined I would and that I’ve now gained a whole new appreciation for the streams of noise entering my brain. I think I can say that before I lost hearing in my left ear some five-plus years ago, I never gave much thought to the actual experience of hearing: I could hear something or not; a room was overly noisy or it wasn’t. When the hearing went away (overnight, as sometimes happens to people), I was plunged into a disorienting preoccupation with hearing (or not): my balance was off, I couldn’t sing in tune, I had no idea where voices were coming from (it took me a while to train myself not to spin around in rapid circles like my dog in a vain attempt to locate the source of a noise). Gradually, I adjusted to the new reality, learning to aim my good ear towards my interlocutors and to ask people to mute competing noises.
Even though I was aware (even hyperaware) of locating the source of sounds, I was not yet fully aware of how my brain did the amazing work of consolidating multiple streams of noise into what I could identify as “hearing.” Nor did I fully realize that one of those streams was my own voice, which--as I now realize--includes the words we intend to say (maybe that’s not quite noise, but it is information), the noise that our vocal chords send through our skulls, and the noise our vocal chords send through the air to be picked up by our ears. Those three streams then integrate (again thanks to our amazing brains) into the “single stream” of sound we receive consciously.
When I received the transmitter for my cochlear implant, all of those layers of sound broke apart. Certainly I was aware (as I generally am) of what I intended to say, but that was presented back to me in a newly kaleidoscopic (if I can apply that word to noise) form: I was hearing my voice through my skull, to be sure, but the transmitter also seemed to be banging against my skull, in a different timbre than the deep resonance I had become accustomed to. And was what I was hearing through the transmitter really conducting through my skull, or was it sending it directly into my brain? Suddenly I was hyperaware, even more than when I was hearing only through my right ear, that I was hearing through my right ear and hearing on my left side, but not through the ear. And that skull resonance I’d always taken for granted? Now I’m hyper aware of that as well. If you’re confused and a bit exhausted by my attempt to explain these sensations, I apologize. On the other hand, confusion and exhaustion seem to be part of the learning process for me.
I’ve noticed, for instance, that each morning when I first don transmitter and begin streaming the news directly into my brain, I’m able to decipher a fair number of words and even follow some stories (I do better when the announcer reads the news than when they cut to sound bites or interviews). As time passes, however, I find that more and more words pass me by, and after about 15 minutes, most everything is gibberish. Still, I am grateful and optimistic: progress may be slow, but it is real.
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