If It Quacks Like a Duck...

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Today was the day of my third map. Already!! So much progress, so much time. I am holding on just fine and dandy.

Dreading the word comprehension testing as I always do, I knew I just had to do what I could. (Really, no one likes to fail a test!!) First the audie put me in the sound booth (a short jail term of maybe 1/2 an hour. I can handle that...) to hear tones. High ones. Low ones. Weird ones. I had to raise my hand every time I heard a sound, no matter how soft. The soft ones are tricky for me. Do I hear it? Is that what I’m hearing or is that an echo? After that was done, I was tested on single words with a male voice recording. The man always said, “Ready” before the word. (Ready…word, ready…word.) Then, with the male voice again, I was tested on sentences.

Before the CI (cochlear implant) I had a CNT (could not test-no speech could be heard) in the implanted ear (before it was implanted), but the right ear (the hearing aid-HA-ear) test results for the word test was a paltry 6%!! After a month of activation, I got a 26%. The audie/cheerleader said that it was good for a one-month post-activation test. Patting myself on the back. From 0 to 26 in one month. Zoooming off. Whoo-hoo.

With the sentence test, before the CI, the ear had a CNT rating, but the HA ear got 46% in Sept. 06 and 32% in January 08. Now, with the implanted ear I got 79%. (0 to 79? What kind of engine is in that CI anyway? Winks.) Not bad. I was SOoooo surprised to do as well as I did. The voices are still robotic, but I’m getting more sense of it every day and with today’s new map, the robotic sounds are really tapering down. Yep, a little less “ducky.” You know that saying “if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, then it MUST be a duck? Well, obviously, not every person I talk to are ducks. LOL

She also balanced out the electrodes. She had two electrodes go off with a beep sequentially (one after the other) and I had to tell her if they sounded the same or whether one was louder or softer. They all had to be equal-sounding. Sometimes it was hard to tell, but I did get the more obvious “higher” or “lower” beeps. I could almost picture the electrodes as a xylophone and hitting the same thingy twice. Ting, Ting. Or Ting, Tong. Nope, didn’t match.

BTW, you guys know I call the CI “Pete” or “Petey”, but Hubby says it should be “Mr. Roboto” after a song from Styx. LOL. Okay, so that can be Petey's nickname.

Instead of all the programs with ADRO with increased volume, I have:

P1-ADRO
P2-ADRO with more volume
P3-Focused Listening (Beam)
P4-Music with autosensitivity

I kind of slapped Hubby on the knee and obviously hinted around with “MP3 player for Christmas” LOL Great for listening to music. Winks. I was advised to listen to familiar songs (Hubby piped up with Christmas carols and I am thinking of my favorite songs that I know-mostly those that were popular in the 80s and some country songs, too.)

My next map is supposed to be for the 3 month mark. That is in November. The audie did say that I may call or email her with any problems and if I needed a tweak or fine-tuning, then I could come in before the 3-month appt. Let's see how much Petey and I work together by then and get a 90 0r better? Sentences are easier because they do fill in the blanks somehow and I can get them in context. Single word tests are hard for most of us. There's nothing else to work with. I might get the ending (rhyme) or the beginning of the word ("sh") or even the middle of the word (vowel) or something.

On the home front:

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Angel got to race with her peers in a Fun Run thing that a local organization set up for grade school kids. (Last week it was canceled because of the rain.) They get a free tee shirt (who cares that it had the original run date on it?) for participating in the run. Angel ran with the other 3rd grade girls. Only one girl was a classmate and one was a girl from our neighborhood that we knew. They only gave out first thru sixth places. Angel made it to the sixth place!! Yay. You go, girl!! I treated her to a shake for her accomplishment. She liked that. It was a ½ mile run, too. She said she got tired and walked a bit, but I’m still proud of her. Next year, fourth grade boys and girls race together (not separately). She’s kind of freaking out about that. Boys are fast!! Well, if she wanted to, she could work at it and be faster. I’m not going to push her, though.

The end of the week is the mid-quarter time for Flare. I have teacher conferences next Monday. (I never knew that there were conferences in high school unless there was a serious problem. I had to ask my mom about that. She said that they went to the conferences. I guess that because my parents were active in several organizations like Lion's Club, investment clubs, and stamp clubs, that I never really questioned their comings and goings.) Anyway, I am not really complaining too much about her grades so far (I check her grades online. Isn't that something? Information Age has really come so far.) :)

Angel is too young to have mid-quarter progress reports. I think they start at 5th grade at her school, but there will be a parent-teacher conference at the end of the first quarter. The graded paperwork that she brings home every week are really good, so I am not too worried about her academically. She does have some issues behavior-wise. She's very hyper and cannot sit still.

The weather here has been GREAT. Lots of SUN and cool breezes. Yesterday marked the first day of autumn. It still feels like summer. Yeah, I know. When school starts, you feel like summer is over, but technically we still have a few weeks left of summer when school starts. The calendar doesn’t lie, people. Right? LOL. Just wait till the first snow-I’ll be yelling at Jack Frost because we don’t start winter till Dec. 21. It doesn’t matter if we get Indian Summers in October. No, that doesn’t count….