One-year Anniversary of Being a Bionic Woman

It's been a learning process, this past year of being implanted on both sides of my head with cochlear implants, and getting the speech processors programmed and adjusted, and then practicing listening in different environments. I immediately had speech discrimination because I had been deaf such a short time and had been fully hearing previously. But I've continued to have "C.I. moments" throughout the year, where new sounds enter, and my brain makes the connection to what it is. These are usually delightful times followed by gratefulness for this technology.

The other morning, my son and I took a walk with the two dogs. We just headed out to the edge of town and kept walking down the path towards some village. We walked past groves of trees, cornfields, termite mounds, all the while avoiding puddles from the night's rain. Occasionally, we'd hear a bird sound that is unique to Africa, with some cool rhythm that we'd repeat and laugh at. I was so pleased to hear these sounds that remind me that I'm in a different world. I love living in Africa, even though there are plenty of discomforts and risks to life and limb that would be outlawed in our "civilized" society back home. But there's a freedom here to wander and explore, with just a little excitement of the unknown, to crank up the adrenalin. The people are lovely and gracious and worth every inconvenience.

I wondered how I'd be able to return to Africa with these hi-tech gadgets making my life live-able again, with the humidity of rainy season and the incessant dust of the dry season threatening the functioning of my equipment. So far, so good. It's rainy season and I've had no problems. We'll see how dry season does come December.

I've backed off on some of my involvements in the on-line community of support for cochlear implant wearers because there are so many caring, articulate people on HearingJourney.com to answer the questions of newcomers that my posts felt redundant. I have had many opportunities to encourage people on the side and direct them to HJ, which became a second family to me during my return to hearing. I still lurk and post on the forum sometimes, but since the live chats are in the middle of my night here, I have only joined in once in the past several months. But I feel that the whole point is to get people back to their normal lives, and I'm a success story in that regard, thank God.

I still struggle to hear when someone is turned away from me and there is ambient noise to drown out their voice. But I've been trying to get back to my BBC radio broadcasts when I'm puttering in the kitchen, and I've noticed an improvement there, too. When we first got back here a few months ago, I felt proud that I sorted out the English channel from the other language channels on my radio dial. Now, I can pick up words and phrases at a time. Still not getting the whole gist of the story most times, but I enjoy the chatter. There are slight quality of sound improvements that I notice once in awhile that encourage me to keep working at it. And I do prefer to watch movies with the subtitles on. My family doesn't mind one bit, and finds that they read nuances and details in the subtitles that they might have missed in the dialogue otherwise.

There are still a few people who read my blog or refer others here for encouragement in their hearing journey, so now I'm one of the experienced ones, a veteran bilateral cochlear implant user. Plus, I'm living in a remote part of the world where there's no audiological support nearby if my "ears" go down, other than my cyber supports. So far, that's been all I needed! Thanks to all of you for cheering me on this year!