New year New sound

After meeting a lady last night who were asking me all sort of questions about getting cochlear implant and what sort of sound she would hear. I couldn't help but chuckling to myself. I remember what I was hearing through the hearing aids and boy, am I glad that I am not going to hear it again. I would probably struggle to hear again after what I have learnt through the cochlear implant. The whole sound - its just not something we want it taken away. Its like... its my treasure and noone will take it away.

We sat in the restaurant in Pizza Express and we were comparing what we were hearing around us while we sat and eat our meal (wine was on the table too :) ) Her reaction of being surprised by my face whenever I heard some shattered sound of the plates being dropped or not place it on the table gently just make me jump all the time. Any sound of the high frequencies of knife & forks, glasses, plates or the sound of the chairs making jerking noise just as a person trying to get up.

None of these sound bother me before and this is what this lady was hearing. It was just a noise to her. Nothing was clear and she would have to lipreads all the time in order that she could follows what was being said. She had a hearing dog with her and I was surprised to be allowed to have dog in the restaurant but the manager was cool about it as long it have a coat that said "Hearing dog".
Of course, the manager came over from behind this lady asking if he could get anything for the dog. In a way, he was in the wrong because she couldn't see him to hear him. Lucky I was there to repeat what was being said. Pretty soon, she will have the operation with Advanced Bionic (Yay!! ) and she will be able to hear what people saying without the need to lipread people all the time.

Speaking of lipreading, I have noticed that I lost the abilities to lipread people. When wearing my implant, I look at people face around the eyes but not much at looking at their lips (like most hearing people do to get a picture of what a person is saying. Dunno how to explain this at the moment) Without the implant, I used to be able to lipread brilliant but now I would just struggle. Interesting eh?

Thinking back of all the sounds that I was hearing for 26 years through the hearing aids and now I have cochlear implant. How things have change within a year and I must admit that I quite like hearing what I am hearing through cochlear implant.

My 2010 new year resolution is take all phone calls as much as possible and so far I'm doing well so if any of you wanna call me for chat. Call me! :)