Coming to My Senses: One Woman's Cochlear Implant Journey

Baby Steps: Early Discoveriesand Observations

41 Baby Steps: Early Discoveries and Observations In the beginning the most striking, startling, part of using the implant came during the first few seconds, when the inner and outer magnets snapped together connecting my brain with the outer world of sound. Though I’m much less aware of this now, I still occasionally hear this wild noise at the moment the connection occurs. Early on I tried to describe it in verse: If I could see the sharp splintery, crickly-crackly sounds that prick my brain in the moment when the magnets snap together, what would they look like? Volcanic sparks shooting upward? Fire jumping from sprig to sprig? Lightning webbing through the heavens? For about ten days, when I first turned the processor on, I’d glance around the room to see where these crickly-crackly sounds were coming from. I thought maybe they were from the heating system in our house or even my computer. Then I realized they weren’t coming to me from outside, they were occurring within me. They were, so to speak, start-up sounds. 42 Coming to My Senses I know this because I don’t hear these sounds if the processor is off when I put it on my head. What I hear in this moment does not have to do with the magnets themselves but with the electric impulses from the processor rushing into my cochlea, from electrode to electrode, on up the auditory nerve and into my brain. The very first time I heard these sounds—when the implant was activated—I was rattled. It was my idea of what a raging fire must sound like. Then, seconds later, other quite different sounds—sounds from the outer world—began coming in, and I thought, “Whew! Whatever that was—it’s gone!” But then it happened again the next morning, and the next, in fact every time I first put the implant on. I began to think of it as my Michelangelo moment. If you’re familiar with his painting of God touching the finger of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, you’ll know what I mean. The finger of sound has touched my brain. As I connect with it, the vitality of sound zaps me awake. 5 At the other end of the spectrum, when I turned the implant off, I didn’t automatically step back into a silent world. For about six months after the surgery I was often bothered by a condition known as tinnitus, but only after I took the processor off. Tinnitus is usually defined as a roaring or ringing sensation in the ears. It’s known to affect people with normal hearing as well as those with hearing loss, whether or not they’re wearing a hearing aid or their implant is on. It can be quite debilitating, as it’s not only annoying and distracting, it hurts. Baby Steps 43 Sometimes— can’t escape sound now that it’s found an inlet, it goes churning round-round my head rolling-roaring long after the machine’s come off. Or else my hyped-up head can’t quit playing tag with the noises of the day— slip-slap-pop-thump! Echoing round-round my brain till sleep abruptly stops the game. When I signed the medical papers before the operation, I knew the implant might cause tinnitus. I’d experienced it a few times in my life, and it was no fun. It was impossible to get away from, even if I lay down in a dark room and shut my eyes. The good news for me, though, was that I was still able to fall asleep, and when I awoke, it was almost always gone. When I went to Jeanne for my second mapping, I told her about it and said it was as though some of the sounds that came to me were “stuck” in my head, like a bunch of Mexican jumping beans in a box. Jeanne said there was some thought that the auditory nerve, having been stimulated by the implant, 44 Coming to My Senses continues to reach or “grasp” for sounds after the processor is turned off, causing the tinnitus. In my case it has, thankfully, stopped. I don’t know why, anymore than I know what caused it, though I do believe stress was a factor—the stress of having so much...