Speech reading and Sounds!

It's been almost three months since my operation , and subsequent activation ( was activated early , four days post op ). And I can't believe it..

With my trusty Widex SensoP I was able to speak on the telephone with my mother and some relatives,few friends. But as speech reading aided me my whole life , and I also was really pleased with my progress..That was , until my hearing started failing...

At activation , I remember 'feeling' the sounds through my stomach..I was feeling like my every nerve was on fire..My heart was on fire! Thumping and thumping!!

I also remember that I tired after fifteen minutes , and my mother always 'testing' me with little sounds , annoying the hell out of me..LOL!

I have to note that I prided myself that I never suffered with tinnitus..I had of course read up that CI helps to cure tinnitus , and the only problem I had was 'overstimulation' especially after a tiring day , or in the bus..where I usually would turn it off or else I'd develope a good headache...

This period had its ups and downs..

Things that I never heard of , and now I hear are :

- plastic bottle compressing/crushing ( my mother does that so it will have less space at the garbage bin ) that now , annoys the hell out of me , I literally can't stand it!!

- my laptop fan..couldn't hear it...or it was much quieter..now I feel like it is filling the room..I will soon learn to tune it out!!

- the clock ticking..at first I was so amazed..then I got annoyed and I removed the battery ( my mother is going to have a conniption when she notices it..LOL!! she hasn't yet! )

There sure are other sounds that I forget to transcript...

Side effects from the operation is the tinnitus..They've told me that it will eventually go away , but , when?!? I can't even have a lie - in.. as soon as I am half awake , my ear starts 'weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee' and I can't go back to sleep!!another is when I hear a new noise and when it's particular loud , the left side of my tongue goes momentarily numb ( that also happens when I happen to stick my finger and move around to dislodge the wax ). I hope these discomforts will go away after some time , and most people assure me of it..

Oh and yesterday a friend asked me ( noticed that I didn't have the CI on ) if I have any regrets! I said no regrets , just saving my batteries ( will say why soon ) , and we were sitting at a cafeteria with loud music ( music makes me feel breathless in the bad way , so if I'm sitting somewhere I turn it off , I will post it sometime ).

The hardest thing by far , is to wean myself off speech reading when I'm wearing it, and seeing as it's become a habit my entire life , it's pretty hard!!

Oh and there is another 'side-effect' that I think that is really positive!! Before CI , I tended to speak really loud and sometimes fast and everyone told me always to tone it down! Now I'm speaking slower and in lower volume and also I have better speech , but it's hard on my friends that aren't used to it and sometimes they complain as they are seeing me usually outside at caffeterias with all the noise..Better yet , I always keep that even when I've removed the CI for any length of time , and that makes me HAPPY!!

The only strains so far is to wean myself off speech reading when I've got the CI on, and to get better at speech reading when I don't have it on , I was so used to the sound of the voice with speech reading that now it's a real challenge to dissassiocate it, I find sometimes I can't even speech read !! LOL!!