Tag Archives: Cochlear Implant

Doing my hearing homework

Posted on by
Reply

Would you consider it “work” to listen to a favourite album?

That’s how it felt as I slowly became accustomed to the new sound system in my right ear. The cochlear implant had been installed surgically by Dr. Lin and the team at Sunnybrook Hospital in late 2017. Hearing speech in that ear was better already, but music tended to sound chaotic; I avoided it.

The first few months, my homework had been focused mostly on the sound of language. I streamed two programs directly into my right ear from my Ipad, and made educated guesses about the words, sentences and sounds I was hearing.

An online program called Speech Banana focused piece by piece on all the consonants and vowels in the English language. Another program, Angel Sounds, explored language as well as environmental sounds such as a dog barking, or a siren wailing.  It also featured a music test to distinguish different pitches. I had a tough time with that one, often hearing the same note when, in fact, it had risen a whole tone or two (shown on a visual chart). Gah!

speech banana

But with practice, I got better. My brain was getting accustomed to a new auditory input. I tried to put in an hour or two of listening homework each morning. My scores increased. I added my left ear to the mix, with its conventional hearing aid and sometimes distorted hearing.

To inject levity, I watched Stephen Colbert’s daily YouTube clip — basically his take on world news and clever skewering of the orange-haired one and his antics in the U.S.  Then I added the two Jimmys — Fallon and Kimmel — to my hearing homework.

The combo of video and sound helped a lot. Even for a person with normal hearing, seeing someone’s lips improves comprehension.

I was nervous about adding music to the mix, as the Meniere’s condition in my left ear still created distorted sound. Singer Huey Lewis recently spoke about the impact of Meniere’s, and how he had to stop performing when he could no longer sing in key. I posted a comment to Huey’s Facebook page wishing him the best, hoping his condition may stabilize or he may find hearing technology that will bring the music back.

Stories and emotions

YouTube certainly had a tempting variety of music. I searched for Lennie Gallant, an east-coast folk musician we had seen perform live a couple of times. Once, during a break in his performance at Toronto’s Hugh’s Room, I had found myself side by side with Lennie at the urinals in the men’s room. Thinking it was not the best time to bother him, I chatted with him later that night and bought his CD, When We Get There.  I grew to love its mix of stories and emotions, including songs sung in both English and French. A musical craftsman.

Lennie

My daughter Ali had once played Lennie’s music on her laptop for me while we drove to her university home in Hamilton, Ontario — holding the device close to me in the car while I was having a rough spell with my hearing.

Now with my YouTube search, up popped Lennie’s song about love and loss: Pieces of You. I pressed play. I had not heard it in a couple of years but knew the song well and could immediately lock on to the pitch and melody of his vocal.  Seeing Lennie sing it helped me hear it as well. The music mix slowly came into focus in the background. I felt hairs tingling on my neck, knowing that there was some hope to enjoying listening to music again.

Listening to music is work, though. Another favourite album was Gordon Lightfoot’s A Painter Passing Through.  It is a hidden gem among his more popular songs and albums. I dropped my CD into the player in our kitchen and winced at first when I heard the first song, Drifters, a tribute to the cast of characters in bars and music joints. Focusing on Gordon’s vocal, I could slowly put the rest of the mix into place.

A fuzzy image comes into focus

I could follow the bass progressions a little bit.  The percussion sounded crisp. The song was coming together like a fuzzy photograph coming into focus.  I was hearing it through the triangle formed by 1) my memory, 2) some amplified hearing in my left ear, and 3) a new implant in the right ear, delivering sound straight into the cochlea:  “Whether it’s right or wrong, the words of every song, remind us of the love we knew when love could not go wrong, in yesterday…”

When I say that the first factor to hear a familiar song is my memory, what I mean is that my brain knows what the song should sound like.  Somewhere in between that memory and the actual new sound input, there is a fusion of sorts.

I made a habit of playing the CD while preparing supper. Each time I listened, Lightfoot’s musical tapestry became more vivid.

I had a few hearing homework setbacks, like “The Completion Backwards Principle,” a classic album by The Tubes. It is a zany, rock music spectacle with a satirical premise, but music better left intact in my memory at the moment.  Too chaotic for me to follow these days.

Finally, a friend had mentioned a top-flight Scottish percussionist who also happened to be deaf: Evelyn Glennie. I found her TED talk on line….

Evelyn Glennie

Evelynn had lost most of her hearing as a young girl. As she pursued a career in percussion, she experienced music not just through sound but through sight, feeling, intuition, and the kinetics of the human body.

In her TED talk, as she approaches the marimba to perform, Evelyn takes off her shoes. Percussion and music can be experienced through the feet, arms, hands, head.  The body as a resonator — the mind open to experiencing music in multiple ways.

Evelyn is not just an internationally known percussionist, but a champion of music for all, including people with different abilities. She has pushed the music education system and community to see beyond prejudice, to see a universe of musical opportunities for us.

Such rich musical artistry and ideas. So much hope.

 

 

 

 

 

Hearing the drums: Who is your favourite?

Posted on by
2

“Who is your favourite drummer?”

The question caught me off-guard. I was having a post-game beer with three recreational hockey buddies at Amico’s, a gritty Italian eatery on Queen Street West in Toronto. The joint is known for its delicious $10 pasta specials, pizza, and selection of beverages, as well as for its cast of characters and 4 a.m. closing time.

I had set music aside about five years earlier after my remaining good ear — the left one — went haywire from a condition called Meniere’s disease.  I had stopped listening to music as the distorted sound was too painful, physically and emotionally. I could no longer hear the musical tapestry or pitch of a Beatles’ song, or a big band number.

I had also stopped playing music — no longer hacking around on piano and guitar at home. My drum kit was on permanent loan with the band of a jazz pianist I used to play with occasionally. Playing drums with rock bands, concert bands and a percussion ensemble were distant memories.

But after receiving cochlear implant surgery a couple of years ago in my right ear, and using a conventional hearing aid in my still wonky left ear, the music was slowly coming back.

IMG_2410 drum pic

Steve Smith took this freeze-frame image of my hands playing the snare in the mid-80s. Reflected in the background, some older guy uses his iPhone to recreate the photo. 

So when my friend Joe — the stalwart goalie of our McCormick Arena hockey group — asked about drummers, I had to pause.

“I guess I have to go back a few years,” I told him. “Some of my favourite drummers were not virtuosos — they were part of the sound of some of my favourite bands: The Guess Who, Max Webster, and April Wine.”

Sound and mood

Take Garry Peterson, the drummer for Winnipeg’s The Guess Who. His crisp, cool and economical style was the cornerstone of a mesmerizing sound on songs like “No Time” and “American Woman.” He didn’t get in the way, or take the spotlight in tumultuous solos — he was a key part of a special musical fusion. Same goes for Gary McCracken, the original drummer for Max Webster, an innovative and zany rock band out of Sarnia, Ontario. He had an energetic but fluid style that seemed effortless through mood and time changes on a song like “The Party.”

I was blanking on the name of April Wine’s drummer. My friend Steve, who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of rock, quick thumbs on google search, and a heavy slapshot, came to the rescue: “Jerry Mercer.” Jerry lays down a powerhouse beat on “I like to rock” that is a key part of the musical mix. The YouTube video of that song is heavy, campy and joyous. You can google it.

A drumming showman

I said that I did appreciate one virtuoso — jazz drummer Buddy Rich. I was lucky to see Buddy live several times in Toronto, at Seneca College’s Minkler Auditorium. He was a grouchy taskmaster, slumped over his drum kit, leading a band of hot young players from across the U.S.  He would lay into an opening beat and shout out the score number — sending his bandmates flipping through their musical charts to be ready.

buddy rich

Buddy Rich — in the zone

In his drum solos, Buddy was a showman.  He set musical themes and used contrasting times and volumes to develop them, often with high drama — like when he brought his snare roll to a bare whisper, or used only his cymbals to repeat the theme.  The thing that was obvious about Buddy: musical was a language he learned at a very early age. Through his drum solos, he told stories.

As we chatted over beer and pizza, my friend Dwayne mentioned the modern-day You Tube musical café of rock-soul singer Darryl Hall — he of Hall and Oates fame. Dwayne, who had played high-level hockey in his home province of Saskatchewan, noted that Darryl would team up with musical friends. They were reinterpreting old hits with a mix of new and old talent, including some great drummers and percussionists.

I replied that as my hearing came back I had gotten hooked on YouTube videos where drummers break down classic beats.

Mastering the half-time shuffle

One example is Jeff Porcaro’s half-time shuffle on Toto’s hit, Roseanna. Jeff was in the spotlight as Toto’s drummer and was also a sought-after studio musician.  He invented complex rhythms that came off clean and understated in his performance. His half-time shuffle, which he adapted from other drummers he loved, uses a tricky triplet hand pattern and a hard snare back beat on the third note of a four-four bar. In addition, the bass drum plays a kind of bossa nova syncopation over two bars.

Jeff died young unfortunately, but his inspiration keeps the beat. Many drummers have celebrated Jeff’s half-time shuffle by breaking it down on their YouTube clinics. After watching a few of those videos, my hands and feet were twitching. I realized I could play Jeff’s shuffle in my mind, albeit at a very slow pace.

At our Italian eatery, I could hear my friends better, and even catch the pasta specials when Melissa came by to take our order. (This particular evening was the second last before our ice rink and bar were shuttered for the coronavirus pandemic).

Blazing drum battles

Joe said he had been more into sports than music in his youth but remembered the joy of competitive ballroom dancing to swing music as an adult. Dwayne recalled watching Gene Krupa, another top-class showman drummer of the jazz era, and some of the drummers showcased on Johnny Carson’s late-night show. Carson himself was a decent drummer, but his house band, including drummer Ed Shaughnessy, became an incubator for some great drummer wizardry over the years. Shaughnessy went toe to toe with Buddy Rich, for example, in a blazing duel of drumming talent. Then Buddy took a comfy seat with Johnny to trade jabs about music and life.

One of Steve’s favourite drummers was the late Neil Peart, top-flight drummer of the Canadian progressive rock band, Rush. Neil and his bandmates Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson “had the chops and sounded way bigger than a three-some,” Steve said. Interestingly, one of modern drummer Neil’s big influences was… jazz legend Buddy Rich. When Buddy died, Neil paid tribute in a drum solo channeling Buddy’s style.

Our talk triggered many musical memories. I was starting to listen again, and dream about drumming.

 

 

Bilateral meniere’s and my cochlear implant — two years on

Posted on by
2

In fall 2017, the team at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital gave me a new sound system, replacing the impaired natural hearing in my right ear with a cochlear implant.

After hearing some mysterious beeps when the device was first activated at the clinic, I could suddenly sense my spouse, Nadine, speaking next to me on my right side, without swivelling around to look. “You’re hearing me better already,” she told me.

A couple of nights later, I went out with some friends to have a beer and shoot pool. The conversation felt easier. I could sit back and understand perhaps 75 per cent of a free-flowing conversation. Before the surgery, I would have been straining to catch even 40 per cent, using a combination of bad hearing in my left ear, some lip reading, guess work, and bluffing.

I now had a clunky sound processor perched on my right ear, delivering sound to my inner ear via cables, magnets and electrodes. But vanity be damned. Any sheepishness I felt about the apparatus was eclipsed by a sense of ease and wonder at the new sounds — even simple environmental sounds, like drips from the coffee maker.

Ian processor

Later that week I went into the bank and chatted with the teller — something that would have been intimidating before the implant.

The new sound was different — people’s voices sounded distorted, sometimes Darth Vader-ish. Certain musical sounds, especially percussion, sounded crisp and pure; however I was having trouble absorbing the full mix of most music. Meanwhile, I retained some limited and slightly distorted hearing in my left ear, using a conventional hearing aid. My brain was slowly adapting to this strange fusion.

Two years on, life with the cochlear implant has become the new normal. And sometimes we take good things for granted. So it’s important for me to look at the big picture of my journey — including some wins and continuing challenges. Here are a few:

One-on-one conversations

This had been my biggest challenge in the year or two before the implant. At work, my managers and colleagues helped with some workarounds. For example, my colleague Mike volunteered to join me to interview a patient with schizophrenia who was about to make the big leap to community care.  Mike’s notes from that meeting filled in huge gaps related to my hearing trouble, and allowed me to tell the story. Still, each day I had less confidence speaking one-on-one. I approached some conversations with dread, wondering if I could function.

Following the implant, that simple act became easier, starting with the first time I could hear Nadine in my right ear. Or skyping with our daughters Ali and Colleen.  Life’s simple pleasures were sometimes simpler again.

“Deaf mode”

When I had the implant surgery in 2017, it took away almost all of the natural hearing remaining in my right ear.  The good news: when my new cochlear processor was operating, things were much better. But in situations where my processor was turned off — bedtime, sports or swimming, for example — I had to get used to an almost full-deaf mode.

I am still not used to it. I wake up in the morning in a fog of deafness. I start to feel better once my hearing devices are turned on. The coffee helps too.

At my weekly hockey game, I remove both devices — my implant processor, and the Bernafon hearing aid in my left ear — so they don’t get wet when I play. As a result, I am not much of a conversationalist on the bench. Most of the players know, and it’s okay. But I still miss the ease and fun of chatting during a game.

I could learn from a friend of mine who also has a cochlear implant — he takes out his hearing devices and meditates, fully accepting his deaf self.

New learning

After retiring early from my communications career from stress related to my hearing dysfunction, I am trying to restructure my life and purpose. Learning is lifelong and I am taking new directions in learning and teaching. Lectures in subjects ranging from architecture to politics, offered by University of Toronto’s Continuing Education, made me put on my thinking cap. Using stone-craft techniques learned at Haliburton’s School of the Arts, I built a series of dry-stone terraces at our cottage.

I took tentative steps towards teaching.  The best result has been a new tutor role at East York Learning Experience. My student — who is just a year or two younger than me — is learning computer basics such as email and web navigation, and also brushing up on his reading and writing. We learn together. He reads slowly but understands deeply; we have some amazing discussions about books he is reading. The other week I had a big smile on my face when I received my student’s first email to me.

In another small foray into teaching, I was able to share some of my corporate communications experience with professional-writing students at York University.

Meniere’s disease

Meniere’s involves a fluid build-up that causes periods of vertigo, hearing distortion, hearing variability, and a steady overall hearing loss. I have this condition in both ears. Meniere’s is said to take its own course, and treatment is focused mostly on relieving symptoms such as nausea from the vertigo. Meniere’s took away my hearing to the point where conventional hearing aid technology was not cutting it, and I qualified for a cochlear implant.

Since the implant two years ago, I’ve had several bouts of Meniere’s-related vertigo in my left ear, but have had little or no symptoms in my right ear — the one with the cochlear implant.  So that’s been a blessing, and it implies that if I ever have cochlear implant surgery in my left ear, it should reduce Meniere’s symptoms there too.

Music

Playing and listening to music were a big part of my life. When my hearing became distorted and muted before the implant, I gave up both. Some favourite songs sounded like garbage — it was too painful to try to listen.

I’ve taken some tentative steps to play and listen again.  I’m giving myself a homework assignment this winter to get back into it with more vigour.  When it comes to familiar music, I have a magic triad going for me — the three-way links between my brain’s memory, my new cochlear sound system, and my remaining distorted natural hearing. That combination means I can at least make progress on music that is familiar.

The biggest challenge with unfamiliar music is locking on to the musical key, and interpreting the musical mix. I’ll give you an example: I went to see a saxophone quartet recently at an event hosted by the Don Mills Public Library, back in my old suburban stomping grounds. The quartet — Sidecar 78 — channels a range of classical, pop, jazz and seasonal music in a tight style. At this concert, I found that when I knew the tune and could lock on to the melody, the complete musical picture came into focus — like a big inky blob on a Rorschach test suddenly revealing a familiar face.

Favourite songs like Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke — a tribute to Duke Ellington — and Henry Mancini’s theme to the Pink Panther — came into sharp focus for me. At the same time, I struggled to find the key signature and melody in songs I did not know.

At Sunnybrook Hospital, researchers are studying the ability of cochlear implant recipients to listen to music.  Next week, I will have 50 electrodes attached to my head while I listen to classical music duets, and focus on just one instrument. I hope that research like this will continue to improve the precision and effectiveness of hearing devices such as cochlear implants and hearing aids.

The final part of my musical homework this winter will be learning some classic snare drum solos. Wish me luck.

Ian1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cochlear implant is a new dawn for a person with bilateral Meniere’s disease

Posted on by
12

Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto has completed almost 2,000 cochlear implants to restore hearing in adults affected by severe or profound hearing loss — people like me. Of those, about 50 share my condition of bilateral Meniere’s Disease. It’s a condition that puts the inner ear through repeated wash cycles, triggering vertigo and progressive hearing distortion and loss. In some people, like me, both ears are affected.

Gael Kennedy Hannan asked me to write about my experience with Meniere’s and my cochlear implant for her blog: Hearing Health Matters. Gael is also author of The Way I Hear It: A Life with Hearing Loss. After having my cochlear implant surgery at Sunnybrook in fall 2017, it’s a new chapter for me as I get used to a brand new sound pattern in  my right ear and the possibilities of better hearing, better engagement – and even the sound of music.

I was on a deadline for a news story for the Addiction Research Foundation, when the words started falling off the screen of my little Macintosh computer. I was hustling to put the story together, but the words appeared to be jumping off the page like ducks to water. My eyes jerked back and forth but could not catch them.

Pretty soon I was in the hard spin of vertigo – the world whirling around me. My eyes could not control the messages my inner ears were sending to my brain. Hanging on to the wall, I stumbled out of the office, lurched along the sidewalk and caught the bus and subway home.

I was young and strong and could tough it out – the hours of spinning, nausea, vomiting, and finally, a peaceful sleep.

I was back at the office the next day and wrapped up the story. After my morning coffee, life was good. I was working with a great team. Together, we were telling the story of an organization committed to helping people — through addiction treatment and research. (ARF is now part of CAMH, the Toronto-based Centre for Addiction and Mental Health).

At home, in the early 1990s, my wife Nadine and I were raising two beautiful daughters, Alison and Colleen. We tried to appreciate all of the magical moments, the sights and sounds of family life, along with our busy careers.

Changing sound patterns

After the vertigo attacks, I did notice that the hearing in my right ear was becoming distorted. In fact, the sound pattern was changing day to day – from a normal but tinny sound, to a garbled effect, like the sound from a stereo speaker that had a big rip in its woofer.

As the episodes recurred, I sought help from my family doctor, who referred me to the ENT team at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. I was diagnosed with Meniere’s Disease, a condition affecting my right inner ear and consequently my balance and hearing. I was told Meniere’s “took its own course.” There was no cure, but symptoms like nausea could be treated with medication. Vertigo episodes in some cases could be prevented or mediated by a diuretic and other medications.  The condition certainly was not life-threatening and I had otherwise good health to be thankful for. “You are a young man with bad hearing,” the ENT doc told me. I was given a diuretic to take during vertigo episodes and encouraged to consider a hearing aid for my right ear.

Fast forward to 2012. I had taken on an exciting career challenge at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) as senior communicator on the bank’s largest enterprise project – tackling an emerging global tax law that targeted tax havens.

One Sunday morning, I woke up practically deaf in my “good ear” – the left ear I had relied on for functional hearing for most of my career. We had a family event that day and I faked my way through it, at the same time worrying about how to face work the next day. As is the case with Meniere’s, some hearing returned the next day. It was distorted, but I got by. After seeing my audiologist, I started wearing two hearing aids as the Meniere’s was now bilateral — affecting both ears.

I was no longer young, but I was still strong and could tough it out. RBC became a leader in engaging the new global regulations, and I was proud to be a big part of the team that made it happen.

Finding allies

I found an ally in an unexpected place. Tech guru Guy Kawasaki was speaking at a communications conference I attended. He told the keynote audience that he was using a cane that day and wearing a large hearing aid to deal with his Meniere’s disease.  It was the first time I had heard someone mention “my” condition in public.  Guy took a refreshing approach to his health challenge.  He used humor to create awareness about Meniere’s – for example, claiming that he was getting deaf and dizzy from listening to too many bad pitches for new high-tech businesses.

I reached out to Guy by email and we had a great virtual conversation. I discovered he was a hockey player, like me, who noticed that the body mechanics of ice skating – its different ballet of angles and gravity – were positive for people like us who had balance problems.

Another ally was Don Lynch, a retired high school teacher who started a support group for Meniere’s patients in Toronto. The words from Don that stuck with me are about making the choice to “stand up” to face the challenge of Meniere’s – or any life challenge for that matter. Don also created a forum for people to share their experiences, fears and hopes.

A moving target

As my audiologist – now at St. Michael’s Hospital – told me, my hearing was a moving target. It could be tested conventionally, but the sound pattern changed daily in both ears. On paper, based on conventional testing at different sound tones, I was a good candidate for hearing aids. And they had helped me. But each day, I was finding it harder and harder to function at work with tasks we all take for granted – speaking on the phone, participating in a small meeting, or having coffee conversation with colleagues.

My hearing loss was in the 60-70 decibel range in each ear, (human speech is about 50 DB). To complicate matters, my hearing aids were amplifying sounds distorted by Meniere’s disease in my inner ear.

With family and friends, I was beginning to withdraw from events and avoid conversations. I was missing the intimacy and humor of being with the people I loved.

In 2015, I returned to CAMH to take on some communications projects in the hospital’s Public Affairs group. I think I did some of the best work of my career in a 2 ½ year stint with CAMH, a world-class hospital integrating mental health care and research.

As my Meniere’s progressed, I became more assertive to disclose my condition to my team and colleagues. I also found some workarounds to be able to continue to function as a hospital reporter and photographer, telling the CAMH story. The organization and my colleagues stepped up to help. In a couple of cases, for example, colleagues joined me at important interviews with patients, to ensure that, as a team, we got the story right. In other cases, I took care of photography first and filled in the gaps on a story with follow-up interviews by email. Especially for a hearing impaired person, it’s hard to imagine a world without the ease of text messaging, bbm, email and social media.

From surviving to thriving

Still, my hearing function – and some recurring vertigo episodes – were making it harder to get the job done. I often felt was surviving when I should have been thriving at work. I had been referred by St. Mike’s to Sunnybrook’s Cochlear Implant program. After extensive testing of my hearing with and without aids by Audiologist and Program Coordinator David Shipp, I qualified and was put on a 12-18 month wait list for the surgery.

I was strong, but not willing to tough it out this time. I needed a change. I took a personal sabbatical from working life to focus on some new challenges and adventures, like home improvements, and learning the ancient craft of dry stone wall building.

At home, my wife, daughters, family and friends were incredibly supportive. I recognized the impact of my condition – and my response to it – had on them. At home the four of us always made a point of eating dinner together and sharing the day. When the kids were in their teens, I was often “out of it” at dinner conversations due to the hearing problem, and to my own lack of focus. I would sometimes retreat into my own zone and miss the buzz and beauty of family life. My mood was affected and I know I was sometimes miserable to my family and others.

Through ups and downs my wife and kids were there for me. I’ve had to lean on them, and I want them to be able to lean on me going forward.

A new hearing system

In October, 2017, Sunnybrook’s Dr. Vincent Lin successfully completed my 90-minute surgery to implant the device. In November, Audiologist Anna Leung activated it for the first time, and started the process to fine-tune it at different tone levels. I had a new hearing system in my right ear, and continued to wear the conventional aid in my left ear.

Sunnybrook Hospital has completed close to 2,000 cochlear implants in adults. About 50 of those patients have my condition: bilateral Meniere’s. I’ve met several of them, either in person or virtually. What I’ve heard anecdotally matches my own experience to date with the cochlear implant:

  • There is likely to be a good result early on following surgery – this may be because people with Meniere’s have already coped with variable hearing patterns. Perhaps our brains can pick up the new pattern quicker. I noticed right away how the implant was filling in high-pitched components of speech, like the letter “S”, and this made conversation easier.
  • The ability to hear in noise may be improved. One of my fellow Meniere’s patients said this was the top benefit from his implant. I’ve personally noticed better discrimination of voices in a noisy environment – specifically the pool hall where I meet some neighborhood friends to have a pint and shoot pool. With my cochlear implant, conversation seems easier and more spontaneous. At the same time, certain environments are challenging and I am starting to experiment with a directional option for noise control on my implant processor.
  • There may be a reduction in symptoms of vertigo. In the first six weeks following my surgery, I thankfully have not experienced vertigo symptoms, apart from surgery-related dizziness that went away quickly. I will continue to track this. A Meniere’s patient I spoke to reported a reduction in the problems he had with balance and vertigo.

These potential benefits deserve further research as cochlear implant programs grow and continue to assist more patients like me who have Meniere’s Disease.

These days, I complete daily homework to improve my new hearing system and my brain’s ability to adapt to it. I’m told this will take some time. My homework includes word recognition exercises, audiobooks, and coffee chats with friends. The chats help me get used to different voice patterns, and to reconnect. To keep things fun, I sometimes stream monologues from Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Mayers and others directly into my new right-ear hearing system.

Nadine has attended audiologist appointments with me and jumped into the tech side of my new tools – helping set up my new remote microphone pen, and sorting through the pieces of the puzzle of my cochlear implant processor.

Personal allies keep popping out of the woodwork, including cochlear implant patients and friends who have offered support. In turn, I can also help others who are now on the wait list, or who want to share their experience with hearing loss or Meniere’s. I also have learned more about a thriving deaf culture, and the challenges deaf people face in a hearing world. I took my hearing for granted when it was normal, and am still catching up on some of the current issues of advocacy and human rights.

After giving up music a few years ago due to hearing distortion, I am slowly rediscovering it again. I’ve been playing some Elton John songs on our 1920 Heintzman. I am a hacker on the piano – my background is percussion – but I’m appreciating the chords and notes that I am hearing again. I find it a bit easier to hear and “get” music on the radio too.

It’s early days for me as I adjust to the new hearing system. There are steps forward and back. But as the song goes: “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life….”

And I’m starting to feel good.