Today at work I peeled the shell off an egg over the top of a small trashcan. No big deal, right? Who hasn't done that with a boiled egg at one point? As I dropped tiny little pieces of eggshell into the trashcan, I realized I could hear the little plink of each piece as it hit the trashcan.
Wow.
Such a small thing, but it was so super cool to me that I listened raptly for each plink. Each plink was like a mini-miracle. I think it is the first time I have not been irked by a boiled egg that was not peeling easily. You know how irritating that can be when you have to practically pry the pieces off the egg millimeter by millimeter? Not this time! I deliberately and consciously peeled off the eggshell and dropped each piece one at a time.
Plink.
Plink.
Plink.
I was completely fascinated that I could hear the pieces hitting the trashcan and I was glad to have more of them to hear.
It's been so long since I blogged about the cochlear implant. I am kinda sad that I didn't keep up with things better so I could better remember the milestones, but the whole process was so much tougher than I ever dreamed it would be that I almost lost my mind. Certainly the difficulties propelled me into yet another major depression. As someone who struggles with mental health issues, this was definitely a trigger. I would caution any adult considering this procedure to be sure you have a support system in place psychologically, too, and more than that, that you are prepared for it to be be hard as hell. I thought it was going to be a breeze.
Nope.
It was pretty bad.
I didn't want to leave my room. I couldn't stand being around anyone. Getting through the day without giving up felt almost impossible. And I don't mean giving up as in giving up my cochlear implant. I mean giving up as in "I can't take life anymore and I want to die."
Let's backtrack and I will share a few of the things I remember most.
Remember I switched to a new audiologist and it was better? It was better at first, but I kept overreaching. When I was sitting in a chair in the audiologist's office with little noise, it was hard to guess how the CI settings would transition to the "real world." What sounded manageable in those controlled circumstances could be intolerable when faced with the myriad of noises that come with reality.
This is how we arrive at a good volume for the CI - the audiologist will play a beep and I indicate at which point the beep reaches an intolerable volume. Then he does it again with another beep at another frequency, and so on.
I had only been through the process of adjusting the CI settings about 4 times, but I already had a tendency to sit in that chair and hear this isolated beep and think, "Oh, pffff, piece of cake! That's totally manageable! Turn it up!"
Naturally I would leave the controlled office environment and be assailed by sound at a volume that was really too much. That isolated beep was nothing compared to being hit with voices, traffic, air conditioning noises, keyboards, printers, footsteps, as well as a ton of random clicks, hums, beeps, whistles, screeches, thumps, yells, babbles and knocks that I couldn't even place.
My brain couldn't take it. For months. And months.
I remember one day at work, the sound of the library security gate was all I could hear. When anyone crosses over the security gate, it makes a clickclickclick sound. For just one day, that clickclickclick was CLICKCLICKCLICK to me. Then just as quickly, it receded.
Now I don't even notice it.
Then for about a two week period in April or May, the clicking of the library secretary's keyboard keys was completely overwhelming. TAPTAPTAP TAP TAP TAPTAP TAPTAPTAPTAP. Argh!! I just wanted someone to Make.It.Stop.
Sometime shortly after that I had a day or two where the background voices of the students was overwhelming. You would think that would be the case all of the time, and yes, crowd noise is often difficult, but this was even worse than usual. I was so overwhelmed by it that I couldn't even lipread. That had never happened before. I've always been able to lipread when talking one-on-one with an individual, no matter what the background situation is. (Well, unless it is dark!) But I couldn't do it and I had to have students write down everything they were trying to say to me and I remember being near tears.
That is what my brain has been doing all these months. So many unfamiliar sounds have been reaching my auditory nerve and my brain didn't and still doesn't know what to do with them all. It often focuses on one sound at a time. I guess that is my brain's way of figuring out where it goes, like a toddler sorting blocks.
My mood lifted enough after school let out for the summer that I felt like I was at least a human being again, but still, as recently as June/July, I didn't think I was going to make it with the cochlear implant.
One night I talked to my mom and told her, "I just don't think this is working for me and I don't know what to do" and then I cried. My poor Mom.
I kept wearing it, partly because I didn't want to feel like a failure, which is funny because no one, no one was putting that pressure on me. I was putting it all on myself.
Part of me kept saying, "Give it a year, give it a year." So I pushed on, mostly hating it, but not yet flushing it down the toilet or crushing it under my shoes as I sometimes fantasized about doing.
Progress felt painfully slow.
Then when I got back to work for the 2012-2013 school year, I realized that sounds were not as overwhelming. That really shocked me. I hadn't felt like I had made much progress at all, but being in the mountains for the summer and having that time to heal physically and mentally did more than I had realized.
And now, mid-September, I am ready for my cochlear implant to be "turned up" for the first time in about 6 months. I want more volume! That's pretty amazing.
I want more eggshell moments. :) It is worth it.
