Family Update and New Mapping

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Sorry, guys. I've been so behind. I'll try to do my blog rounds when I can. It seems lately that I"ve been playing catch up with my emails and not my blogging. I'm here.

I've been getting into a routine with Petey (my cochlear implant) along with some adjustments at home with the girls back in school.

I've also been enjoying the nice autumniod weather we've been having the past week. I'm half expecting the leaves to turn into fiery foilage, the kind that airbrushes the trees in reds, oranges, and yellows. I haven't spotted any squirrels "nesting" the nuts. The squirrels here are pretty nutty. Hubby had to set a trap in the attic. About a year or so ago, we had one living up there, tearing up cardboard boxes (for the glue that holds the boxes together). I guess that glue comes from tree sap or something. Hubby did trap one and let it go miles and miles away from home.

Then earlier this spring, another squirrel is trying to reside in our walls in the attic. We've been trying to keep it away from it. Flare actually got a video from her camera showing how mad that squirrel was at us because we were outside, preventing that squirrel from getting to the roof. Unfortunately, I cannot upload that video to show you that video. I am not sure if that video is just too long or what. I can watch it on the computer, but I can't upload it. Oh, well.

The girls are settled into school. Flare says that high school isn't as bad as she thought it would be. She's outgoing and making new friends. She plans on going to the Homecoming dance with a bunch of girls, just to have fun. Angel likes her new teacher and she has three new kids in her class (bringing the total to 13, with another new kid coming in October yet). With no deadlines, and pressure from my schoolwork anymore, I am much more calmer about helping Angel with her homework and memory work. She's had to memorize various Bible passages and hymn verses three times a week. She loves the new playground for recess.

Flare just had her school pictures taken last Thursday and now Angel gets hers this coming Thursday. It seems that picture day is scheduled earlier and earlier in the school year. I could remember it being in October all the time.


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When we got to the facility for the map (Petey is still a baby, getting his second "routine" check...then in another two weeks, he gets his one-month check...growing in sounds), Hubby parked on the second level in the parking garage. A first!! So instead of going to the elevators to get to Level 2 and then entering the hospital, we just had to enter it, because we didn't have to get to Level 2. The last time, we just had to get on another elevator to get to the second floor, and then get to the third floor in a different elevator. But Hubby was just walking along, with me hanging on to his arm. I just figured that he just knew where he was going. Nope. I then told him; don’t we have to get to the third floor? He was like, oh, yeah, the parking ramp screwed him up. LOL. (Really, I am the BLONDE one, not him.)

Finally we get to the front desk and register. We only waited for a few minutes and there my audie was. She asked how things were and started the soft-comfortable-loud tone test. I got it louder, but it’s all on the same ADRO setting. Nothing fancy. She’s still weaning me into it. Every audie and center does things differently. I'd rather do it slowly than to just jump in and get overwhelmed.

I did tell her about how sore the tip of my ear was and she put some moleskin under the ear hook to see if that would be better. So far, so good. If nothing else, I figured I'd get a blister and then it'd toughen up.

She put me into a sound proof room to re-audiogram me. In the CI ear, unaided, I totally failed. I have no residual hearing in it whatsoever. I kind of suspected that because I tried putting my other hearing aid in it just to see if I could still her that “beep” when I first turned it on. Nope. It was gone. I know some still retain some residual hearing after a CI surgery, but not all. I’m okay with it. The CI is my ear. Good old’ Pete. :)

I did tell her I felt kind of lightheaded (more than usual, anyway. Winks. LOL) when she tried to test the CI ear unaided. It kind of pulsed, too. The good news is that in my unaided HA ear; the hearing level is the same. :) She didn’t test me on anything else. No words or sentences.

I told her how it’s hard for me to tell if I’m hearing the high pitches and she said that it would be hard if I never heard them before. I told her about how I used to play on my Gramma’s organ and hit the high notes on the left and that I couldn't hear the high notes on last six keys, but Gramma’s dog would be howling, “OOOOooooOOOOoooooo!!!” (Too bad we didn't have camcorders 30 years ago, that would have been a good "World's Funniest Video" clip to send.)

I kept having fits of laughter on the way home (poor Hubby must have thought his wife lost her mind) with the image of my Gramma's dog howling along with the organ music. (Gramma said his ears hurt, but it sure looked like he wanted to sing; he was just like a wolf howling at the moon.)

It wasn’t a really exciting map, but it’s louder and I will acclimate to that. I told her about how hard it was to tell that the volume was higher with each program, she said some people are more sensitive to volume increases, so she just made the volume increases more noticeable, but not too much. She doesn’t want to overdo it.



Yesterday, I turned off my HA and just tried to listen with the CI. I heard the phone ring!! I actually RECOGNIZED the ringing, though it's not the same sound I hear with the HA, but hey, it's progress!! Usually I hear something and the CI would just go "nuts" and I don't know what it's trying to interpret. It just goes haywire. Ding, ping-aling. What's that? Then when I see what it is, I'll listen more to make the brain recognize it better. But the phone!! It was cool!! Of course, I had to quick turn on the HA and answer the phone. Only it was a wasted effort. (Satellite TV anyone?)

So far, I'm getting clearer hollow sounds than before, not like the haywire sounds of before. :)

So now Petey and I will move on with this adjusted map and see where it takes us for the next two weeks...(I'll keep you posted on Progress Road, journey to sound.)