Phantom noises

Monday started off so exciting. I was eager to see what I could hear and couldn't wait to put on my CI.

As I sat in my car Monday morning, waiting for the engine to warm up a bit, I thought I heard birds. There was this staccato of sound that I couldn't relate to anything in my environment until I noticed birds flying around.

Don’t get too excited. I have heard birds before. But usually only when I’m outside, everything else is completely quiet and the birds are very close by. I don’t know that I have ever heard birds while sitting in my car with the door shut and the engine running.

Then I decided to try music again and I played Southern Cross, the Jimmy Buffett version. Right at the beginning there is this series of notes that I don't think I have ever noticed before. I can't tell what they are or what instrument makes them, but I was enchanted. Most of the drive to work, I found myself rewinding Southern Cross just to listen to the beginning over and over again. I actually felt a tickle in my head when I heard them. A pleasant tickle. Oh dear, no sex jokes here, please. Please, no. ACK, I'm making one in my head even as I type! GAHHHH!!!!

Moving on ... At work, as with over the weekend at home, I needed to really focus on the sources of sounds to figure out what they were. My filters still were not working well at all and most sounds just blended together into a loud din. The noise in the hallways between classes was pretty overwhelming.

Then by 2 p.m., my brain was d-u-n. Done. Finished. Over it. Caput. It didn't want to process anything else. Everything deteriorated into a roar of robotic noise, but I determinedly kept on my processor, even after work at the gym and at Target. By the time I got to Target, sound was starting to feel physically painful again. I found myself wincing often at the various noises hitting me.

Monday night while trying to fall asleep, I was visited by "phantom noises." You know how it is said that people who have lost a limb continue to think they feel pain there? I just kept hearing sounds that I knew were not there. My processor was off, I was almost completely deaf, but I kept hearing noises. It started off as a rapid, ceaseless ticktickticktickticktick, like an evil, berserk clock. Then I started hearing bells, beeps and whistles, and then the evil clock noise came back. Tickticktickticktickticktick.... I was up until 3 a.m. with the freaking evil clock ticking in my head!!

Unfortunately nothing has changed over these last two days. The ticking has gone away, yes, but all I am hearing is robotic voices, beeps and whistles. Loudly. Constantly. I thought I was going to lose my mind today at work.

My CI is off right now. If it wasn't for the hope that all of this noise is going to coalesce into recognizable sounds and voices, I don't think I would ever want to put it on again. I don't know how long it is going to take for me and when I feel like giving up, I remind myself it has only been 5 days. 120 hours, 1/2 that really when you factor in sleep and other times I have had it off. So let's say 60 hours of CI usage versus 38 years of deafness. I need to give myself time and I need to be kind to myself while I'm going through this. I'm not very kind to myself, in case you haven't picked up on that and that just makes everything harder.