Background:
I have severe hearing loss due to a congenital disorder. I lost all the hearing in my right ear when I was 13. I turned 23 this year and almost all the hearing in my left ear has gone as well. Seeing no reason to delay any further, my neurologists recommended I get a cochlear implant to improve my quality of life.
On 12/09/13, I had the cochlear implant surgery on my left ear. The procedure only lasted 1.5 hours, pretty short compared to my previous two surgeries. It was an outpatient procedure, so I got to go home on the same day.
Post-op selfie:
That giant dark brown patch is my blood:
After 2 days I could take off my dressings:
It's pretty gross back there, and I have that Ace Ventura head:
Preempting some questions:
1) Can you hear now?
No, it's not activated yet. Because of the holiday season, I will probably have to wait until after New Years for activation. What this surgery accomplished was insert a series of electrodes into my left ear, which would stimulate the remnants of my cochlea using electric signals it receives from an external receiver/processor.
The electrodes:
The processor:
2) How much hearing will it restore?
No clue. My doctors are optimistic about my prospects, but because it's hard to say just how much hearing it will restore they are very reluctant to give patient misleading expectations like flat percentages, which don't mean much when it comes to something like hearing. At the very least, it'll be better than nothing, which is basically what I had before.
3) What happens after activation?
For about a year after the initial activation, I will need to see an audiologist every month or so to preform calibrations and adjustments on my implant, controlling the range of frequencies it's amplifying in order to enable me to hear, with an emphasis on human speech instead of ambient sounds or music. Although I do look forward to be able to listening to some of these YouTube videos I've been missing out on over the last decade, even if they get filtered through a Dalek voice changer.
4) Do you know ASL/lipreading?
I can lipread, a bit. I never really practiced lipreading (lessons are fucking expensive) but picked it up naturally during highschool/college. Contrary to popular belief, lipreading will not function as well as hearing unless you're some kind of savant. The key to effective lipreading is context. It's analogous to how Google predicts your searches or corrects them based on past searches. When I try to lip read, I make a mental list of all the possible things that the speaker could be saying to me and then match the shape of those words to their lip movements. As you can imagine, it's very exhausting. I can lipread passably in common settings like restaurants and the doctor's office, but if you throw me into a random place with someone speaking about a random topic I'd be completely lost.
As for ASL, I studied it for a few years but I never really bothered to pick it up for various reasons. The main reason is that I don't think it'll benefit me in the long run, seeing as how I do most of my communication with non-deaf people or on the internet. I do remember enough of my ASL to be suspicious of the "interpreter" at Mandela's memorial service, though I didn't learn about him until after the fact.
5) What's it like being deaf/hard-of-hearing?
Speaking only for myself, if I had to describe being hearing impaired in one word, it'd be "lonely". My family has been supportive of me throughout my entire life, and the friends who I haven't managed to push away during my rougher teenage years have been invaluable in maintaining my sanity. GAF, also, affords me a lot of entertainment and chances to talk to people. But when I walk around Manhattan or attend class, seeing all these people around me and not being able to understand a word they say; when I can't hold a conversation without asking the other party to write down what they want to tell me; when I see all the latest fads on YouTube pass me by while all I can do is smile and nod, I can't help but feel so far away.
I'm grateful as anything for being alive now, of all times. Being hearing impaired has never been easier. But it's a sad irony that, because it's easier today for a deaf person to live in hearing society, it's that much easier to be reminded of just how much he or she is missing out on. And for someone like me, who wasn't born deaf but was gradually pushed into it by circumstance, well, it's a refined kind of torture that will last the rest of my life. Hopefully the cochlear implant changes that, but I'll always think about the years I've lost to deafness.
6) ლ(ಠ益ಠლ
Y u no show face?
I'm shy ._.
Feel free to ask me any other questions about deafness/cochlear implants and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. Although keep in mind I do not speak for the deaf community in general. In fact, I believe I'm something of an outlier.
BONUS - Me playing with some cats in Shanghai.
One of them was blind in one eye, but it was calm and no scare at all.
I have severe hearing loss due to a congenital disorder. I lost all the hearing in my right ear when I was 13. I turned 23 this year and almost all the hearing in my left ear has gone as well. Seeing no reason to delay any further, my neurologists recommended I get a cochlear implant to improve my quality of life.
On 12/09/13, I had the cochlear implant surgery on my left ear. The procedure only lasted 1.5 hours, pretty short compared to my previous two surgeries. It was an outpatient procedure, so I got to go home on the same day.
Post-op selfie:
That giant dark brown patch is my blood:
After 2 days I could take off my dressings:
It's pretty gross back there, and I have that Ace Ventura head:
Preempting some questions:
1) Can you hear now?
No, it's not activated yet. Because of the holiday season, I will probably have to wait until after New Years for activation. What this surgery accomplished was insert a series of electrodes into my left ear, which would stimulate the remnants of my cochlea using electric signals it receives from an external receiver/processor.
The electrodes:
The processor:
2) How much hearing will it restore?
No clue. My doctors are optimistic about my prospects, but because it's hard to say just how much hearing it will restore they are very reluctant to give patient misleading expectations like flat percentages, which don't mean much when it comes to something like hearing. At the very least, it'll be better than nothing, which is basically what I had before.
3) What happens after activation?
For about a year after the initial activation, I will need to see an audiologist every month or so to preform calibrations and adjustments on my implant, controlling the range of frequencies it's amplifying in order to enable me to hear, with an emphasis on human speech instead of ambient sounds or music. Although I do look forward to be able to listening to some of these YouTube videos I've been missing out on over the last decade, even if they get filtered through a Dalek voice changer.
4) Do you know ASL/lipreading?
I can lipread, a bit. I never really practiced lipreading (lessons are fucking expensive) but picked it up naturally during highschool/college. Contrary to popular belief, lipreading will not function as well as hearing unless you're some kind of savant. The key to effective lipreading is context. It's analogous to how Google predicts your searches or corrects them based on past searches. When I try to lip read, I make a mental list of all the possible things that the speaker could be saying to me and then match the shape of those words to their lip movements. As you can imagine, it's very exhausting. I can lipread passably in common settings like restaurants and the doctor's office, but if you throw me into a random place with someone speaking about a random topic I'd be completely lost.
As for ASL, I studied it for a few years but I never really bothered to pick it up for various reasons. The main reason is that I don't think it'll benefit me in the long run, seeing as how I do most of my communication with non-deaf people or on the internet. I do remember enough of my ASL to be suspicious of the "interpreter" at Mandela's memorial service, though I didn't learn about him until after the fact.
5) What's it like being deaf/hard-of-hearing?
Speaking only for myself, if I had to describe being hearing impaired in one word, it'd be "lonely". My family has been supportive of me throughout my entire life, and the friends who I haven't managed to push away during my rougher teenage years have been invaluable in maintaining my sanity. GAF, also, affords me a lot of entertainment and chances to talk to people. But when I walk around Manhattan or attend class, seeing all these people around me and not being able to understand a word they say; when I can't hold a conversation without asking the other party to write down what they want to tell me; when I see all the latest fads on YouTube pass me by while all I can do is smile and nod, I can't help but feel so far away.
I'm grateful as anything for being alive now, of all times. Being hearing impaired has never been easier. But it's a sad irony that, because it's easier today for a deaf person to live in hearing society, it's that much easier to be reminded of just how much he or she is missing out on. And for someone like me, who wasn't born deaf but was gradually pushed into it by circumstance, well, it's a refined kind of torture that will last the rest of my life. Hopefully the cochlear implant changes that, but I'll always think about the years I've lost to deafness.
6) ლ(ಠ益ಠლ
Y u no show face? I'm shy ._.
Feel free to ask me any other questions about deafness/cochlear implants and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability. Although keep in mind I do not speak for the deaf community in general. In fact, I believe I'm something of an outlier.
BONUS - Me playing with some cats in Shanghai.
They were a group of nine strays who hung out around those benches in the residential area where I was staying.
One of them was blind in one eye, but it was calm and no scare at all.
