Quick Roundup of Random Bits and Pieces That Have Been Bouncing Around My Mind.
1. Forgot my iPOD when I flew home for Thanksgiving. I didn’t get to try out the Harmony on the plane. However, I did have my laptop with me and listened to movies/music via my MacBook.
When flying and using my headphones, there’s a slight hum/hiss in the “background” of the sound that’s being delivered to my ears. I figure that the noise of the engine (I was sitting just behind the wing of the plane) is very strong. I don’t know anything about electrical interference, but it’s just something I’ve noticed.
2. When in the bathroom at the airport, I was able to understand “Now Boarding Southwest Airlines Flight Fourteen —“ and that was it.
3. My Sidekick II finally fell apart and started spazzing out back in October. I bought a brand new replacement, the Sidekick LX. So far I love it and all the features it offers, but the one BIG negative is that the speakerphone is very weak. Even with the CI, I can barely discern what is being said through the speakerphone.
I may take it back and switch to a Blackberry. Or I may just keep it until my contract expires, and use the time to practice and improve my hearing. I wish somebody would design the perfect smartphone for CI users.
4. I’m still ambivalent about getting a second CI. There are moments where I prefer the hearing aid over the CI. I’m still not thrilled with the Harmony 120 Fidelity, and more tweaking is probably needed. But I need to make a decision very soon.
5. Being sick with a cold and a sinus infection, I prefer wearing a hearing aid over my cochlear implant. The spot where the magnet is attached to my skull aches when I am sick.
6. One thing I’ve discovered due to my unhappiness with the Harmony, is that I can still understand speech with my hearing aid. But what I want to know is how much does the CI help fill in the blank. When all/most of the sound is being delivered into the HA ear, I understand it, whereas I don’t understand or hear anything in my CI ear. The capacity for understanding seems to be based on the direction the sound is coming from.
7. I babysat for a five-year-old last night, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to go, because children’s speech has always been difficult, even with my own nieces and nephews. However, I think it went very well, and the CI helped with the understanding of speech.
8. I get frustrated when I’m working in groups (or with a few people), and somebody who’s doing the majority of the speaking turns away and starts talking to somebody else. I can hear them talking, but not what they are saying. And when I protest, they tell me that they were talking to them, not me.
The question is, is it rude to do that? I didn’t like it that he turned his back to me when we were doing training, and when I said I couldn’t see what he was saying, he said that he wasn’t talking to me.
9. Me being Typhoid (or Typhoon, depending on who you ask) Allison since the beginning of November, have gotten several people sick. Mom got sick just in time for Thanksgiving Day, and I celebrated with one of her co-workers that I had never met, plus the co-worker’s family.
It was interesting, because I was nervous about going out into the desert for a picnic, and interacting with people that I didn’t know, and still understand everything that was going on. It went just fine.
10. Black Friday was my first day back at work, and it was scary. My Bosses had enough faith in me to stick me in Electronics. It was scary watching people stampede towards electronics. It was literally a tsunami of people.
This was my 5th Black Friday, and it never changes. What was different this year was that I was able to catch more people trying to get my attention. It was overwhelming. However, due to the noise level, it was extremely difficult to hear what was being asked.
That’s all for this edition!
The Bionic Sound Project 