Change of programme!

The people from the Manchester Cochlear Implant programme came over to Malta this week, and while they were there they asked me to pop over at the hospital. Since I have just had my tests in Manchester just a few weeks ago it didn't make sense for me to have the tests run again but I took the opportunity to ask for a programme change. I had been toying with taking the plunge and removing the Beam programme which I have, frankly, found pretty useless. In fact, the only circumstances I found it useful was to listen to someone on my left hand side in a plane! The idea is good, the problem is that it sounds too faint to be of any use.

So, I replaced it with Whisper, with a particular use in mind. I've a particular customer that has the habit of whispering when speaking, and I have struggled at times to understand him. Hopefully this will permit me to understand him more.

in Holland..

I'm currently in Holland yet again. I'm sitting in my office (our customers call it the Maltese office as we make use of it when we're over!) waiting to start off a meeting. The window is open and a light fresh breeze is coming in. We're in the countryside over here so it's a welcome change from my office back in Malta, which is basically in the middle of an industrial area in front of Malta's busiest road (although we've a nice view from the floor I'm on!) I can hear chickens clucking outside, a cock crowing triumphantly every once in a while.. the odd tractor burbling over to tow another roll of hay, birds singing.. interesting sounds, quasi background music I would say!

Went swimming!

We went to the beach yesterday (7th June is a public holiday in Malta - first day of the swimming season as far as I'm concerned!). Aside from the fact that it was beautiful but flipping freezing still (water temp is 21 C!), I obviously had to stay without my speech processor. I can honestly say that, aside from the time I spend having a haircut or getting washed, this was the longest I stayed with my CI off. All of a sudden it came back to me again - hey, I'm deaf.. without that implant, I'm deafer than a stone. Obviously since my last remnants of hearing have been destroyed, I could hear absolutely nothing. It was a sobering thought that just a few months I was almost ALWAYS like that - not hearing a thing that is. I could even hear my tinnitus so much more - I'm not conscious of it when I have my implant on. It just gives me the shivers to think of something happening and having to return to that state again...

Worrying occurance

I had a bit of a worrying occurance yesterday. I was hoovering the carpet in my car (something VERY infrequent I must add!), and then, when I came out, all of a sudden, I started hearing very loud, rustling sounds through my CI implant. It actually sounded similar to the sound one gets when one moves something against a microphone, and this way I realised it was my hair against the microphone. Uhoh, I thought, something is wrong here. I don't normally hear my hair against the mike. Moving along I heard the movement of my specs arms against the headphone too. Worrying me now. My neighbour was using his hoover too, and it sounded muted, strange. I turned my speech processor off, and turned it on again. The rustling disappeared, but sound still sounded muffled. I stifled the feeling of panic and went upstairs, and spoke to Mandy. She sounded quite faint. I tried using the plug in cable from the TV, and that sounded ok, so I assumed it's something wrong with the microphone.

So, I unplugged the headpiece from the speech processor, removed the microphone cover, and dusted off both the inside as well as the mike cover itself. I put everything back together, and, it was working! Phew!

Moral of the story - even though speech processors are pretty hardy, you really must take care of them. Better, take them off when doing dirty work!