CIborg bloggen til en ung voksen CI-bruker

Major changes in sounds happened during the first few days. The first hours after the activation everything heard just like bells. All voices were perceived as very bright and female-like, even the profound male voice of my sound technician. I could hear the letter “s”, something I’ve never heard before, but in reality I heard everything as vowels. I was (of course) not able to understand the sounds and especially speech the first days, so I was completely dependent on wearing a hearing aid in my other ear. But it’s best to use the CI only as much as possible to really listen and get used to the sounds.

During the next few days I felt I could hear better in some situations compared with hearing aid, even though the sounds were not fully understandable yet. For example already the second day I could better separate voices from people in a subway from the noise coming from the subway and its engine. And I could separate sounds from their echo, when sitting in a hallway or somewhere with a lot of echo. Even better was I heard less echo and much more of the sound actually causing the echo, such as voices or footsteps. If I switched on my hearing aid on my other ear for comparison I only heard echo. The voices also became much darker during the days after activation. Luckily men now sounded like men.

During the adjustments of my CI it became clear that I couldn’t hear the 4-5 brightest (treble) electrodes. When the technician sent sound in those frequencies I didn’t perceive them as sound, but as pressure on my head. This is common for people with a profound hearing loss who’d always been deaf in the treble or bass area, and it takes a while until you can perceive sound in those areas. To make it more comfortable we created a program where the 4 most treble frequencies were excluded. A couple of days later I perceived sound in the darkest of those four freuencies, included it in my program, and so on. In a few weeks I perceived sound on all frequencies.

During those first days of activation my CI was programmed with Bionics’ unique feature which distribute the 16 electrodes to 120 frequencies, but it was too early to hear a difference yet. (read about HiRes ® Fidelity 120). After a few weeks the sound technician realized he made a mistake when telling me which program was which (on purpose or not?) so it turned out the program I preferred was the one with 120 frequencies. I’m still using that feature.

It should be mentioned that I was bothered by tinnitus (ringing in the ears) from day one of CI activation. The tinnitus lasted even after I took off my CI and made it difficult for me to sleep. The next morning the ringing was gone, but after a few hours with CI it started again. Sometimes the tinnitus was so loud it interfered with me trying to listen at sounds, and it often “tricked me” believing I heard noises that weren’t there. I sought for information and some people told me tinnitus was not common with CI, except perhaps a period after activation. I was told people who struggle with constant tinnitus normally get rid of it after getting CI. The technician in charge of my case was wondering whether the tinnitus was because we were stimulating the hearing nerve on places it has never been stimulated. He had had one patient earlier who got a serious tinnitus problem after CI activation, and chose the same CI producer as I did. I became quite frustrated and worried the tinnitus would never go away, a problem I have never had before. Luckily I had less tinnitus after approx. one-two weeks and after around four weeks I never had tinnitus again.

The weeks went past with many sound experiences I’ve never had before: I heard the computer mouse clicks, my cellphone vibrating on a table some distance apart and I finally realized how hearing people could understand whispering. I was too anxious to try music yet. Speech had changed from bells to “vræ vræ”-sounds so I still had to wear hearing aid on my other ear in order to understand speech.

The first thing you need to be prepared for is that it takes a long time to train your hearing with CI. I can’t emphasize it enough. The brain has to readjust to receive different signals and it takes time before the electrons are adapted. Even adults who had had normal hearing before loosing it will experience the sound through CI different from before. There’s probably very few people who actually hears well (understanding sounds) the first days of activation. It can take several months up to several years before you truly benefit from CI. Obviously you get better results if you actively use your CI and practise as much as possible listening to sounds, preferably also with an audio educator. You have to practice listening with CI, just as you have to practise balancing a bike before you can bicycle.

Even though I was mentally prepared to not understand the sounds right away and was expecting a long period of training, I was excited about how it would sound as opposed to hearing aids – something I’m so used to. I arrived excitedly at Rikshospitalet and was taken into a small room with an audio technician and my contact from the CI team. The audio technician had my CI apparatus, connected a wire to it from his computer and put the magnet on my head. I was very surprised over its position, it was quite far back. The placement of the magnet depends on the CI producers and Bionics position it (unfortunately) quite far away behind the ear. This could lead to issues such as losing connection when leaning back on something.

The CI activation normally last four days. You fine-tune the apparatus once or twice every day and the remainder of the day you try to perceive as much sound as possible. When you are adjusting the sound you sit with your apparatus on your head which is connected to a computer. The program on the computer transmit short frequency sounds. Remember to turn off your CI or hearing aid on the other ear, I didn’t catch that! The volume increases until you find it at a acceptable level or before it gets uncomfortable. When you say stop the audio technician proceeds to the next frequency. This repeats itself until you have adjusted a comfortable volumne on each of the frequencies. After this the technician activates your CI so you can hear the surroundings.

My first day with CI

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the sound I heard when the technician first activated the CI to listen to the surroundings. Voices sounded like bells and was completely impossible to understand. All the sounds was in very high frequency and it was weird to listen to the male technician talking with a bright Donald Duck-voice. The reason to why I perceived all sounds as very bright is probably because I’d lost all my treble hearing and was used to darker (bass) sounds. Therefore my brain has adjusted all familiar sounds at a darker level because it doesn’t include treble frequencies. The CI provides a much more accurate sound by using the whole frequencies range, bass as well as treble, and my brain need to readjust.

The highlight of the day was to hear something I’ve never heard before, namely the letter “s”. During the next four days of activation I experienced large variations and sound experiences. As the days went I got more used to CI and the sound became more comfortable and slowly more understandable, but I was still dependent on using hearing aid on my other ear to be able to understand speech. I have written a separate post on the days after the activation in The days after activation.

The fourth and last day of CI activation I obtained all the equipment to my CI including a starter’s kit (a CD with sounds and spoken sentences) for new CI users. Because I couldn’t hear the most treble frequencies I got a closer follow-up than what’s normal. I left the hospital with my CI programmed in three different programs to try out and a new session in two weeks.