Can she hear with it?

So a funny thing happened today.  A patron who comes in all the time, who I have always thought had a British accent, spent a few moments talking to one of the subs we had working in place of someone who was out sick.   After he left she mentioned she had known him since he was in grade school.   This confused me.  Shouldn’t he have lost the accent by now?  The guy is  middle-aged.

But he has a British accent, I say.  You’ve known him since grade school?

He doesn’t have a British accent, she says.

Huh.  I guess he just has British lips.

Every day I practice listening to speech with my implant for at least a couple hours, on top of my usual work day.  It sounds like work, but I enjoy it.  My implant has a small hook up type device called ‘direct connect’ that enables me to connect directly to a computer, iPod or CD player so the sound can go directly into my implanted ear. It isn’t a requirement that I isolate the sound to that ear, but sometimes I like to.  The idea is not to strain to hear, but to read along with captions and to absorb as much as possible.

I think all of the cochlear companies have their own websites geared toward listening practice. Advanced Bionics has the Listening Room. Here’s an example of an exercise that can be downloaded onto your iPod. A speaker reads a sentence and stops somewhere. You touch the correct colored square on the screen that matches the color of the word where the speaker stopped. This is just one exercise for teenagers or adults. There are several different types of exercises for people of all ages. The Listening Room is free. You do not have to own an iPod. There are many exercises to try if you like this sort of thing.

The Listening Room



Public libraries are great places to look for audio books. I have read through a bunch of children’s audio books since I was activated last week. Some of them have too much background noise and I get lost.

One of my favorite websites is Bookflix.  With a library card, my library system offers a free subscription on its website.   Maybe yours does too?

This site pairs up children’s video story books  with non-fiction read-alongs of a  similar theme.  One book is set to video with captions while the other is an audio book.  The words are highlighted as you read.  They are absolutely perfect for listening practice! The videos, like the children’s audio books, can have distracting sound effects, but I don’t get lost so easily because the words are highlighted.  This helps me to distinguish words from noise and other sounds.   I know it sounds weird, but that can be hard.

There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly by Simms Taback-- a video story book at the BookFlix website



You Are What You Eat by Sharon Gordon-- a Read-Along book at the Bookflix website



See how the word “sweets” is highlighted in red?   That word was being read out loud when I took the screen shot.  In the story book video, you can see the word “swallowed” is highlighted in blue.  Same thing.

It was during one of these videos, Zin, Zin, Zin Violin, that I discovered I might be ready to listen to music with my cochlear implant.

Youtube is a great because you can see the lyrics and follow along.

I was surprised that I could make out a tune so early- especially after watching Charles Limb’s Ted talk a couple weeks ago.  You would think music would be out of the question this early on– and yet amazingly– I WAS able to tell a horn from a violin just five days after activation– something I wasn’t able to do before the implant.

I will admit the music is tinny, and it’s not like I can listen to just anything yet, but it wasn’t off key.   I’m just in the beginning stages.  There will be many mappings.  I’m feeling very reassured.

The Beatles singing "In My Life" - Youtube



My audiologist said not to watch captioned TV with the sound turned off.  I always have the sound on because I usually watch TV with other people.  I am glad that I have done this now.  One less thing to get used to.   I found that it’s great practice to listen on the computer.  Hulu.com has a lot of captioned programs. I especially like that you can set the color of your fonts. As you can see, I prefer yellow.

Good Morning American December 20th on Hulu.com



I’ve been listening to NPR in the car– not that I can hear much– but I get bits and pieces and I’m starting to feel well informed about all things considered.

All in all I think I’m getting in a lot of language stimulation, and I’m feeling pretty good about my progress this week.  I am excited about my mapping tomorrow.

(She is working on it. . .)

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