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Cochlear Implant Part 4
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Cochlear Implant Part 4 |
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Jaime Fradera Senior Member
since 2000-11-25
Posts 843Where no tyranny is tolerable |
Before continuing with the implant story, I will describe the role that limited hearing plays in my daily life, as this will help the reader appreciate ways I have learned to use this new listening tool. There is an exact analogy between the experience and adjustment to living with partial vision and living with partial hearing. As my hearing worsened, my emotional reactions alternated between fear, despair, anger and denial. Caretakers took me to specialist after specialist in the hope of finding one who might know what was wrong and what could be done about it. As a young adult I did not receive proper guidance and was not taught healthy attitudes. As years passed I cycled in and out of rehab programs in which I was taught what to do with the hearing I still had, but not what to do when it was gone. Since I was neither fully deaf nor fully hearing----that is, either partially hearing or partially deaf depending on whim or maybe on what time it was, I had trouble explaining to people that, although I couldn’t hear, I really could hear, and even though I could hear, I really couldn’t. As I adopted Federation philosophy, I began to realize that this was nothing more than a sophisticated form of denial and that faking hearing one doesn’t have is no different from faking vision one does not have. Although I was given a hearing-aid, I eventually stopped using it because the phonic ear has been a more effective listening tool and is easy for people to use. As I learned to use the teletouch, the manual alphabet and enough rudimentary sign to get by, I realized that deaf-blindness was only a characteristic and that with proper training and adjustment it could be approached as an incidental daily nuisance, like being caught outside in the rain or having to take out the trash. I even entertained the idea that the average deaf-blind person could do the average job as well as his sighted and hearing colleagues. This hypothesis has since been confirmed. Here’s how it works. All our senses are limited, and we perceive the world through them subject to certain conditions. We can perceive light, but it must be above a certain intensity and of the right wave-length, in the range between the UV and infrared part of the spectrum. We can see objects in the environment provided they are at the right distance and resolution and there is enough lighting and visual contrast----that is, they must be larger than molecules and smaller than galaxies. We can perceive color, but only if the rods and cones of the eyes are undamaged. For another example, Natural gas is both odorless and invisible. We can smell gas only because a chemical agent is added to give it a strong recognizable odor, and even then, this agent must reach a certain concentration in the air before it can be detected. Of course, this can only work for a person who doesn’t have the flu and who has not lost the sense of smell. A final example will suffice. Our sense of hearing, as shown earlier, is subject to limitations and conditions. We can recognize a sound provided it is loud enough but not dangerously intense, that it falls within the range of audible frequencies, that the sound source is not too distant, that there are no competing sounds (which is called noise), that the ears and associated nerves are undamaged, and that we are attentive and listening. This applies equally to everyone, including people who have full hearing, partial hearing and no hearing at all. This takes us back to the tools of listening and the world of sound. Although my hearing is limited, so is everyone else’s. The difference is just one of threshold and degree. I believe the realization that all of us are limited each in our own way has helped me use my remaining natural hearing more effectively and get more out of life generally. I have found my remaining natural hearing to be more or less useful depending on the activity or situation. With my unaided ear I am deaf for most purposes and may hear only very loud sounds, so for listening I wear commercially available earphones that focus sound directly into the ear. In this way I can listen to a cassette or a CD player, as well as jaws and streaming music from the Internet … or whatever. I use the earphones to listen to the FM system receiver as the transmitter-microphone is held or passed around between speakers. While writing this piece, my hearing is irrelevant because I am working with an Alva Braille terminal. However, because I have chosen to listen through earphones to an audio stream as I work, nothing else will be heard. If I am waiting for a knock or telephone call, I will get off the computer, put on all my listening stuff, get rid of all interfering noises, and wait. If there is something cool streaming on the Internet, a party downstairs, or an armed robbery next door, unless it is loud enough to produce interfering noises, it will not be noticed. Because I can only listen to one thing at a time, this involves deciding what I want to listen to at a given moment and what can be ignored. (This is similar to the way in which someone with a satellite television system, who may have hundreds of channels from which to choose, must make a judgment as to which channel is important, and when a selection is made, all the other channels are de-selectted, and if a cool program is being broadcast on one of them, it will not be seen.) In this building the fire alarm shrieks loudly enough to wake me up and get my attention without my wearing any equipment. When cooking I rely more on the cooking odors for information than on anything else, and the vibrations of a cookpot can indicate when its contents are simmering or boiling. Coffee makers and micro-waves also vibrate when in use. The “clean fork” method can test for doneness, as can a quick dab of a finger. I have always been able to hear those little $17 kitchen timers just holding one up to my ear. When I’m talking with friends, running errands or attending public events we generally use the phonic ear. When traveling I endeavor to cross at intersections that have stop signs and where there is little traffic. This is because although I can hear traffic noises, I cannot locate or interpret them and because I will need to make those crossings without usable hearing if the listening stuff is broken. While crossing streets without hearing may sound like a calculated risk, and even though people sometimes park or drive illegally, which can be a nuisance for all of us, this can be managed by considering alternate routes, bus lines, the time of day, and recommendations from friends about which crossings are best and which should be avoided. In general narrow quiet streets with four-way stop signs on Sundays are the best, while broad multi-lane congested arteries at rush hour will be the worst. I ride fixed-route busses in the usual way. A bus can be located by the air-condition breeze it kicks up as it stops and opens. If a bus driver doesn’t identify a bus at a stop I will get on just long enough to identify it using either the phonic ear or teletouch or, if all else fails hand motions to find out whether to stay on or get off. This is not to say I am always ready for anything that might happen, I’m not; or that I always pay attention, I don’t. But at best, that’s what I try to do. Music is still part of my life, though in a different way. My discrimination is poor in the upper registers, ie, all the notes of the scale sound the same or similar, and I can’t tell them apart. I cannot distinguish between notes and chords of an organ or guitar. I do not hear the difference between sharps and flats and between major and minor chords. A song may sound vaguely musical in that I can follow its tempo, but may mostly sound toneless. To use an optical analogy, it would be as if, instead of being able to perceive the subtle colors, shades and Hughes in a painting, one saw only fuzzy blobs that might be brown or gray, dark or light, with very poor visual contrast. It is partly for this reason that I listen mostly to oldies music I once heard normally, relying on memory as a kind of listening aid. My discrimination is a little better in the lower registers, particularly if there is a repeating pattern of notes and a strong base tempo----ie, Carlos Santana, rap and disco rock. For another example, if it’s a lot of organ violin or flute sounds, I won’t get much out of it, but if it has lots of drum and percussion, I’ll get more. In the full, seventeen-minute version of Inagda Davida, I must rely on memory to follow the guitar and organ sections, but I still get the same electric charge listening to all that incredibly incredibly intricate drumwork. Once I went to a drumming group. This was nothing but drumwork, and as I played with the group I had the eerie and novel feeling that I was playing in a band!!! Or that my deafness didn’t matter. I never expected that I could be actually making music in a group again … not after all that has happened. It felt so unbelievable. This takes us back to the cochlear implant. |
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