Smiling Big (no more feedback)

As I was growing up with hearing aids, I am often the "feedback" guy. When I smile big, I make a feedback from the hearing aids. The sound of the feedback is a shrilling whistle noise.

This happens when my hearing makes "a looping feed back to hearing aid" - when its microphone picks up the its output of amplified sound, it makes continous loop of sounds and increasing up to its limits in loudness and frequency (the loudest sounds, with highest frequency, the shrilling noise). When I put earmolds in my ear, the feedback stops unless it "leaks" or exposed and the feedback begins all over again. The ear changes its shape when my jawbone and facial muscles moves, and it opens up the feedback. And I can't hear the feedback myself, but all hearing people can! I have lots of embarassing moments, too.




So when I smile, I used to make a half-smile and nodd my head to express my "big smile". After I had the implant, I turned the hearing aid on and I heard the feedback for the first time ever. It is really annoying!!!

Now that I have cochlear implants, the feedback is impossible - the output is in electronic form instead of ampfied sounds. Lo and behold, no more feedback - and I am able to make the biggest smile as I can - and that made a big difference about myself! I'm very happy that I don't have to "suffer" the feedback moments anymore.

What it takes to hear in noisy places...

Human ear is very remarkable device! The human ear, can hear voices that is quieter than the noises in the background by just 5 decibels!!! For the cochlear implants like Advanced Bionic's Hi-Res, can hear the voices at about 5 decibels louder than the noise. So that means if there is noisy around me during the conversation, I'll have to ask them to talk louder, because I can't even beat the human ear. It's a very polite thing to say, because the speaker wants to you to hear what he/she said.

For example, if I am listening to the music in the car, I'll have to turn music up a bit more so I can hear it beside the turbulence, tires, vibrations, a/c, engine and transmission, etc... as I go on. If I am in an airliner flying at 30,000 feet, I would prefer to hook my implants to XMRadio player. I even can turn my implants off and enjoy a nice, quiet ride. If I am at a rock concert, forget hearing it, but do wear the ear plugs, even though you have implant, but you don't want to rupture the ear drum and its middle ear parts.

Here are the examples of noise levels:

Points of Reference
*measured in dBA or decibels
0 The softest sound a person can hear with normal hearing
10 normal breathing
20 whispering at 5 feet
30 soft whisper
50 rainfall
60 normal conversation
110 shouting in ear
120 thunder

Home
50 refrigerator
50 - 60 electric toothbrush
50 - 75 washing machine
50 - 75 air conditioner
50 - 80 electric shaver
55 coffee percolator
55 - 70 dishwasher
60 sewing machine
60 - 85 vacuum cleaner
60 - 95 hair dryer
65 - 80 alarm clock
70 TV audio
70 - 80 coffee grinder
70 - 95 garbage disposal
75 - 85 flush toilet
80 pop-up toaster
80 doorbell
80 ringing telephone
80 whistling kettle
80 - 90 food mixer or processor
80 - 90 blender
80 - 95 garbage disposal
110 baby crying
110 squeaky toy held close to the ear
135 noisy squeeze toys

Work

40 quiet office, library
50 large office
65 - 95 power lawn mower
80 manual machine, tools
85 handsaw
90 tractor
90 - 115 subway
95 electric drill
100 factory machinery
100 woodworking class
105 snow blower
110 power saw
110 leafblower
120 chain saw, hammer on nail
120 pneumatic drills, heavy machine
120 jet plane (at ramp)
120 ambulance siren
125 chain saw
130 jackhammer, power drill
130 air raid
130 percussion section at symphony
140 airplane taking off
150 jet engine taking off
150 artillery fire at 500 feet
180 rocket launching from pad

Recreation

40 quiet residential area
70 freeway traffic
85 heavy traffic, noisy restaurant
90 truck, shouted conversation
95 - 110 motorcycle
100 snowmobile
100 school dance, boom box
110 disco
110 busy video arcade
110 symphony concert
110 car horn
110 -120 rock concert
112 personal cassette player on high
117 football game (stadium)
120 band concert
125 auto stereo (factory installed)
130 stock car races
143 bicycle horn
150 firecracker
156 capgun
157 balloon pop
162 fireworks (at 3 feet)
163 rifle
166 handgun
170 shotgun

What I learned from bilateral...

The biggest thing I learned from bi-lateral is that I can hear more than just one implant alone. Remember the right ear is for music, and left ear is for voices, and in the mind, the brain put these information from two ears together and create a great auditory perception of the hearing world around me. I just can't go on with one implant alone.

Popcorn

Hear the sounds of popcorn...

I am learning to hear more new things everyday. Tonight I made popcorn - and it was so wild to hear that - it sounded like a stream of explosions, as loud as machine guns kept going off for a while. I recalled hearing that popping sounds with hearing aids - it only sounded like just some toy pop guns popped once a while.

Yes, we CI don't have complete hearing range as normal ear does, but it is alot better than hearing aids alone. What's the difference? It is the amount of information flow into the ears!!!! I had hearing aids for about 36 years. Then CI for more than a year. Wow, what a difference I heard in a year than my lifetime of hearing through hearing aids!!!

I've got some people asking me if someday the ear can be replaced or restored back to natural hearing. I tell them that is a bunch of hokey, because down the road in my life, I don't even expect to see a perfect replacement for ear or cochlear, since it is a nerve, which cannot be repaired or healed. So I had to take my own intitative for my life.

Two hearing aids vs. Bilateral Hearing

Two Hearing aids as compared to bilateral cochlear implants: There are virtually no benefits of continuing to wear the hearing aids when comparing the benefits of cochlear implants. Today’s cochlear implants technology is superior to hearing aids in every category as possible. Therefore, bilateral cochlear implants have huge advantage over the hearing aids, no question at all.

Noise: I can greatly hear better in very noisy areas such as bar, diners, and more. This is very impressive to me and many people told me that I am very different person since I am more responsive than I was with hearing aids. With bilateral hearing, I was able to “cut” and “slice” the echoes and noises across the room and just to hear a person talking in the crowd, just like focusing with telescope.

Speech: My speech has improved greatly, and I had no problems hearing others and speaking as well. I just realized that bilateral hearing helped me to clear out the confusion in understanding the spoken words! I rarely had any confusion understanding the words, even repeating my speech, which is very common with hearing aids. I plan to take speech therapy to greatly improve my new found bilateral hearing and my speech.

Telephone interaction: Wearing the hearing aids, I had to deal with several barriers using the telephones. One of the barriers is the electromagnetic interference from the cellphone. Another barrier using the landline phones is the feedback. Feedback is always constant and challenging when the handset and hearing aids gets too close. With cochlear implants, all the barriers are gone and all I need to do now is learning how to listen the caller. My wife and I are starting talking on the phone more and more than ever because my speech has more clarity and I can understand what she said. I prefer to use speakerphone mode because I can hear much better with my bilateral cochlear implants.

Social Interaction With Strangers: My experience of communicating with strangers are always awkward with hearing aids because I never understood what they said. Now I was able to understand the strangers’ speech better than before. Hearing aids does not help me to hear most critical sounds that speech produces such as /s/ and /sh/.

Family: I live in two-story house with no carpets, and I have a 13 month old daughter. With hearing aids, I recalled that there is so many echoes in the house and I was not able to hear my wife calling me downstairs. All has changed with bilateral implants that my house is very quiet so I was able to hear my wife calling me. One time I heard my baby talking downstairs, too. All and more experiences have assured me I am able to hear these critical sounds with bilateral hearing.

Environmental Surroundings: I recall many experiences that I had hard time hearing the source of the sounds by echolocationing. Now with my bilateral cochlear implants, I was surprised and impressed that I can echolocationing on the first day of bilateral hearing. All the sounds around me such as nature (birds singing, etc…), retail stores (squeaky carts, talking, echos are less distracting), driving (hearing cars around me, listening for 18 wheelers, motorcycles), and many more that I do take granted with bilateral hearing.

My left ear

Hi,

I am still continually adapting a new hearing in my left ear. It is only 5 months since first activation so some progress is made but not as fast as my dominant right ear did.

My left ear still has to learn to discriminate the distortions of sounds such as echo and noises. But I still can hear the voices in noisy environments, which is an very important progress. But I am still not able to understand these voices yet, so that is another challenge I need to work on.

But, I really like to be bilaterally and it does makes a lot of difference hearing with both ears.

Thanks for reading my blog!!!

Dan

Michael Chorost is at it again in Wired 13.11 (Nov 2005)

Change of subject, there is a great article in Nov 2005 issue of Wired about upcoming Avanced Bionics's cochlear implant, the virtual 121 channels by Micheal Chorost. He also wrote a book, Rebuilt (http://www.michaelchorost.com/).

This article by Chorost is now posted at the website:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bolero.html

hear this sound: http://buzz.ifas.ufl.edu/863sl.wav

that is the sound of cicada - that dominates sounds of night....

One night I was in the garage doing the woodworking. The garage is filled with sounds from humming fans, screaming power tools, and rackets of hammer. Then a sound came into my ears, via electrodes, and it goes like this - sshhh sshhh chhhh chhhh kkiaa kkiaa kkiaa sshhh. I turned around, and I can tell that these sounds are from outside. I walked out of garage and into a darken driveway, and I can hear it again. I follow to the sounds and lo and behold, I found the singing cicada. I have never heard like this ever before, even with hearing aids. The sounds of cicada are long and shreking, and I liked hearing that. Whoa!

675 Batteries

Today, I just walked by an aisle at Walgreens' and I noticed the button sized batteries called "675". It is the biggest battery we can buy for the behind the ear hearing aids. Typically it lasts for about 2-3 weeks. It costs about $6 dollars for a set of six batteries. It's been about 4 months since I bought these to replensh my stock, as if it were a checking account that my life depends on it.

When I was growing up, every morning, I was trained to use the battery tester to ensure that I have ample "juice" in the battery for the day's use. Later on, I stopped doing the testing and listen for the sounds to see if it is working fine. I usually talked to myself to check if my battery and hearing are working. Then I start my day from on. I used to keep a stock of 675's in my car, bedroom, and at my office.

When I was a kid, you can only buy these batteries from a hearing aid places, and it would go for about $10 a set. We buy a few sets of these 675's and we always count our battery supply everytime, to ensure that I will not run out of it on weekends. These 675's used to come in many codes like AAA675, 234675, etc... but eventually years later, all became one code - the 675, and then became available at drug stores everywhere.

If I go on a long car trip, all these noises from car would drain the battery. When I was kid, I kept forgetting to take the spare 675's for the trip. By the end of the day, I would have to tell my folks that I need a new 675. My father will get mad at me, telling me why I did not pack these batteries and giving me some "life lessons" examples not to repeat that "stunt" again. (It didn't help at all, thanks to Dad!) He would go on and on telling me, too. .. Then my frustrated mother had to get out of the car and walk to a drug store to see if they have any 675 (in many variations of 675 codes) for sale. Even I did tried to explain them that you can now buy it at drug stores instead of at hearing aid center, but they still believe that 675's from hearing aid center are the only ones that works with my hearing aid.

Now, I no longer have to buy these 675's, since I am now using the rechargble battery. I keep spare rechargable battery in my pocket, because it lasts for about 14 hours. But sometimes it can go dead unexpectly, bringing me back all the memories of my father on the subject of not carrying any spare 675's....

Lessons Learned....

Three things I learned as bilateral:

The volume settings on each implant goes up and down all the time for "balancing". For example, I turn down on left, and turn up on right, and vice versa. The brain sorts all information out and balances it out beautifully.

I cannot go on for one minute with one implant off. I get a strange sensation that there is something wrong. It is like there were no sounds coming in from one ear while other ear is getting information, then my mind starts doubting about it. In my opinion, what really happens is that the brain cannot tell if each ear is working or not - it simply process all the information and place into the perceptual world in your mind. If the brain senses some missing information, it alerts the emotional state as an warning message.

Don't talk to strangers without implants on - your speech is not same as with implants on. :-)

Rebuilt, By Michael Chorost

REBUILT, by Michael Chorost


I am reading a book by Michael Chorost - he has a CII implant (as shown in his xray image of his head on cover). He writes as he describes his experiences of having a computer inside him and how it changed his life forever.

I am on chapter 3 now, and I am really enjoying reading it. He has a wonderful thoughts and brilliant perspective that I can relate.

A must read!

Author's website

Read first chapter (pdf format)

Purchase at Amazon.com Now!

My Comments on this book is coming shortly... ( still reading!!!)

Been only 18 days being bilaterial... and it is working!

Hi,

It has been only 18 days since the activation of my left implant - and things are getting stranger and more interesting. Read on:

1. I can now understand some of words in the song - which I never heard that before.
2. I can understand more new words over the radio, which is unexpected to me.
3. I can understand what people said, more than ever.
4. Even in extreme noisy places, it is so unreal to hear and understand people talking very clearly and without any problems...
5. I cannot use one implant anymore - I believe that my mind gets frustrated when that happens. Ergo, I have to use both implants all the time. For example, several times as the power in the left implant battery ran out, I get "weird sensations" inside me as if my body is telling me to change out the battery fast, fast, fast!!!...
6. I really can locate the source of sound much better than ever - and I just spotted a noisy cricket in the dark tonight.
7. I really can "see" the room of people talking with my eyes closed...
8. I have never felt this confidence this huge ever before in my life...
9. I am talking and listening more over the phone than ever, too...
10. The noisy places like Wal-Mart, HEB Grocery Stores, downtown, airports, and many more are no longer distracting anymore and was able to take more time there...

The best part of all, is that the sounds around me are even more pleasant and sounded very natural to me all the time!

Thanks for reading this blog!

Dan