A really useless transcription

By Sara on December 28, 2009

Barely enough to get the gist of what he’s saying…. could have done better just focusing on trying to hear.
I prefer using text relay versus captel. The relay operator is a better advocate than I am for myself.

Outcome: no CI activation until the 4th even though I had an appt scheduled for tomorrow with the audiologists. Surgeon is on vacation and residents are booked.

(Dialing your telephone number: )
(OUTBOUND:Dialing: )
(WebCapTel CA# C6658)Ringing 1 (F)ent clinic when he can help you ? < wendy > OK hold on 1 2nd Ringing 1
good morning an t
uh called on police (Tones) and < please >

Karl ent May I help you ?
ent crawl may help you < this is carl > Mm hmm hmm um lets see your are scheduled for the 4th that too Oh OK um the president can ask our are pretty overbooked at the present time there is 1 tomorrow and 1 the following day they usually have 15 patients and they have 20 to 22 um seconds you with that President clinic < resident > um we can leave the the that would be a post (speaker unclear) card < correct > right and
if you contract to keep (Speaker too quiet) that productive of major everything is going well
Oh OK alright
um there just isn’t isn’t uh uh opportunity to do that other than the scheduled time on the 4th (Speaker too quiet) of
what Marcia
OK OK bye bye is (Hung Up) Thk U Bye

CA#C6658 (Hung Up) Thk U Bye CA#C6658

The conversation has ended.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 5 Responses

So far, so good

By Sara on December 23, 2009

Had my second CI surgery today and am now bilateral.

I missed my pre-op appointment due to being snowed in from the storm Friday and Saturday with no plows in sight on my street. I was pretty worried but when I called to tell them they said just come for surgery, they could do everything then if I could get there. And by Tuesday morning my street had been cleared (72 hours later!). This actually worked out nice because I’d have had to stay down there from Monday to now for what clearly was an unessential visit.

Anyway, things went fine, about 3 hours, very minimal pain after and no percocet at all. I made a somewhat conscious effort to look awake and the nurse asked if I wanted to go home and if I wanted my clothes. After that I stayed awake. It seemes like they were much less cautious with me post-op than last time. Probably because last time was my first surgery ever and first experience with anesthesia. This time they had my CI on me as I woke up but the magnet wasn’t aligned until I adjusted it. No writing on paper like last time. They didn’t make me try to keep anything down and I had to ask for ginger-ale after.

We had a room to stay in if we needed it but since it was only 3:30 we decided to drive home. I slept most of the way but felt a lot better than last time just because I could hear Don without lipreading. Trying to lipread definitely made me nauseaus last time.

I did have gas bubbles and the bite of banana bread didn’t feel very good. When we go out of the car and started walking to the drug store I threw up all the water and gingerale and felt much better. Glad I hadn’t done that in the car, it had a lot of force. As Don said, the parking lot of the “sketchy” Food Lion was as good a place as any. :)

Then we had to wait for prescriptions. I talked with a man who looked like Santa and is into steel drum music. I need to look up his group, called the pan masters I think…

Now I had some ice cream and am heading to bed. I feel fine, tiny bit sore, bit annoyed by the bandage, it’s warm. Neck is a bit stiff and there’s goo&etc in my hair and I can’t wash it until whoknowswhen. But all minor issues. My biggest complaint is that there’s all this snow and I can’t go skiing.

Posted in About Me, Hearing | Tagged , , | 6 Responses

Waiting and snow storms

By Sara on December 23, 2009

Today is the day. I’m not first this time so have to wait more I think. Not terribly hungry due to stomach butterflies.

I had to reschedule/cancel my pre-op appointment that was supposed to be two days ago because Charlottesville got over two feet of snow. The snow stopped Saturday night but my street didn’t see a single plow until about 3 am Tuesday morning.

I called the surgeon’s nurse Monday morning and she said they could just do any workup before surgery today. Makes sense since I’ve been through this before 8 months ago.

I had a bit of a travel adventure last Friday night. I was in San Antonio all last week for work and my flight home didn’t land in Richmond, VA until after 10pm. The snow storm was predicted to start between 6 and 9pm and go until as late as Sunday morning.

My connection was through Houston, so no problems with the first leg. Surprisingly we left for Richmond on time too.

As we were landing I had my nose pressed against the window. I couldn’t see any snow!! I’d been anxious because people were saying I shouldn’t drive home that night. It didn’t hit me until I heard the captain announce something longer than usual that we weren’t in Richmond.

I panicked for a second and then remembered my phone has a lovely GPS map program. Sure enough – Norfolk Airport. A good hour and a half further from home.

We got to get off the plane while they figured our the plan. We were told if we left we were on our own and TSA was already gone so we couldn’t get back in. We were told that Richmond was trying to keep their short runway plowed so we could land there but it was snowing so heavily that their single plow couldn’t keep up. By the time they plowed one half the other half was covered again. We were told that they had tried to get us there by bus but the roads were so bad the bus company refused to do it. So we waited. Somehow I found an outlet with power and was able to use the free wifi. They brought us pizza and canned soda which both vanished fast. Finally around 1:30am they told us they had found two busses to take us to Richmond but it might take four hours due to the roads.

We got all our bags and the busses came at 2am. We were in Richmond at 4:30. I decided to try to drive home.

I’m from NY where we often get snow but where it always gets plowed quickly. Luckily VDOT was hard at work on the Interstate. It was slippery and snowy but with minimal traffic and decent visibility I made it home. Almost.

My neighborhood was built in the early 1990s. Half of it is in the city and half is in the county. I was aware that the county doesn’t have it’s own plows – there’s a “Begin State Maintenance” sign at the city/county line. Just past that line my car hit foot and a half deep snow and stopped. Right in the middle of the road. I left it and walked the quarter mile home and crawled into bed.

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Hearing a lot: videos, the phone, movies

By Sara on November 17, 2009

Another short update just to say that I’m now able to hear the following things a whole lot better than I could without the implant:

  • High-quality recorded voices.  I’m not understanding movies at the theater, but I am understanding movies at ted.com (without the amazing subtitles that site has!) and many other videos that have professional, high-quality audio tracks.
  • My family on the phone.  I called my dad for his birthday and used webcaptel to fill in the holes.  I hardly had to use the captel at all, and generally if I did need it the captionist hadn’t heard him either (i.e. when the phone was breaking up because he moved too far away from it’s base).  I made the phone call using an iPhone and my bilateral (bimodal currently) direct input cables for a headset.  The iPhone makes it easy to use any headset you need to because plugging one in does not disable the phone’s microphone.
  • Mistakes in closed captioning.  I’ve been watching a lot of movies on my computer and adding subtitles from SRT files.  These are grassroots, volunteer created transcript files and sometimes they’re created by non-english or non-American natives.  Many times the subtitles have a phrase that doesn’t quite make sense (“surviving on just toffee is unsatisfying” when it should have been “surviving on tofu” (if you know what movie that is from then you can’t exactly judge me for watching it, can you? :) ).  These jump out at me visually, but I can easily confirm by hearing what the phrase should have been.
  • Strangers on the airplane?  I’m not sure if this is easier for me or not because most people on airplanes don’t seem to want to talk.  But regardless, I talked to two different people on two of my last flights for pretty much the whole flight.  One was very easy to hear and the other was tricky as his voice blended into the engine noise.  I may also be understanding more of the loud speaker announcements on the plane, but this varies a lot depending on how bad the sound system is.  It also could be due to the fact that I’ve taken off and landed 18 times in the past 3 months… nothing like repetition to improve comprehension.

I was even hearing some of the french in the foreign film we went to see in the theater.  It had english subtitles, but I could still, on occasion, hear the french (numbers and short phrases).

Time to find another book on tape and see how much I can get just from listening and how tiring it ends up being.  I’ll report back :)

Posted in Hearing | 7 Responses

6 Months

By Sara on November 17, 2009

My six month appointment at the CI center was a good one. I drove down to Chapel Hill the day before and spent the evening with my cousin and his wife. I hadn’t seen them since before my CI surgery, so it was nice to catch up.

The audiologists had moved to a satellite location away from UNC hospital. I found that ok, only had to make one U-Turn. They were ready to see me as I walked in the door.

I had emailed ahead of my appointment saying that I’d like to be evaluated for a second implant but I hadn’t really heard back from them confirming that. We talked about it at my previous (3 or 4 month) visit but my appointment with the surgeon had gotten lost in all the times that they had changed my appointment time and I had changed and rescheduled due to travel conflicts.

So as I sat down in the sound booth they said I was scheduled with them for the evaluation now, then with the surgeon, and then I could come back and see them again to do a new mapping afterward. As it turned out, we got through everything rather quickly and had time to do new maps before I left them. The ENT office is chronically behind schedule anyway, so I wasn’t worried about showing up 10 minutes late.

audiogram-11-09The interesting part of this visit was that we tested everything. Residual hearing in both ears, hearing aid in just the left ear, implant in the right ear. I’m really starting to learn the HNT test sentences which was making it hard to get an accurate score with my unimplanted ear. I was getting all or nothing on those sentences which obviously shows I wasn’t really hearing, just remembering.

Like I said in a previous post, I knew I still had some residual hearing in my implanted (right) ear. I notice it when I listen to music in the car – the bass comes through even without the implant on. Still, they hadn’t tested that ear since 2 weeks after surgery and I still had some fluid in that ear.

They checked out my hearing aid and turned it up just a little before doing the CI evaluation to make sure that I had a properly fit aid as is required.

Then came sentences, sentences in noise and CNC words.  I actually enjoyed the CNC test with my CI.  I see that one improving quite a bit more from the 64% it’s at now.

audi-11-09

So I saw the surgeon and he didn’t see any reason not to go bilateral if I wanted.  I’ve had 2+ months to think seriously about it and it’s really a very easy choice.  I hear so much more with the implant than with just a hearing aid.  My brain is interpreting most sounds as normal, and even music sounds good.

We’re using the same MedEl Medium-electrode and aiming to preserve hearing again.  He warned me that I have more to lose in that ear, but functionally, it’s about the same.  The date is December 23rd which might sound crazy to some people, but it means I won’t have to take much time off of work.  My company shuts down for the rest of the year at Christmas and I’m required to save vacation days or go without pay.  The last two years we have traveled, but this year it will be nice to just relax.

Posted in Hearing | 3 Responses

Mainstreaming vs Deaf School…

By Sara on November 13, 2009

I just read this post by Mark Drolsbaugh at Deaf Culture Online: http://www.deaf-culture-online.com/mainstreaming-vs-deaf.html. It’s about the different levels of social interaction that his son experiences at various summer camps. I liked the article because it really emphasizes how essential peer interaction is. It also shows that even if you aren’t 100% fluent in ASL, it can often times be easier for someone who has a hearing loss to be included in an all-deaf environment. I’ll never be able to completely relax when depending on my hearing to socialize, but with sign language I’m on equal footing, if still a beginner. I can learn ASL, I can’t really learn to hear better.

I’ve experienced this myself to some extent. Mostly it is the awareness level of people. There were hardly any other deaf students in my engineering classes at RIT, but because 10% of the undergraduates at RIT came from NTID and were deaf, I never had to explain to anyone what they could do to help me. They had all been caught in an elevator with 15 signing deaf people. They had all had to communicate with pen and paper or by speaking clearly, enunciating and repeating if necessary. And no one ever assumed I was stuck up because they thought I was ignoring them. That awareness extended into the Rochester community as well. I haven’t experienced it anywhere else since then.

That is how mainstreaming is supposed to work – creating equal access and awareness for all. Unfortunately it takes a critical mass of population to accomplish this. Even in Washington, DC, home of Gallaudet University, I didn’t encounter the awareness level that I did in Rochester.

Anyway… The Deaf Culture Online site is a very good resource for anecdotes and insight into what Deaf people experience.

Posted in Hearing | Tagged , | 1 Response

The Future of Work

By Sara on November 12, 2009

Getting sick of these posts yet? :) I keep posting them because this is something I feel strongly about. I enjoy my job but I don’t enjoy being tied to a desk all day. I want a job that encourages me to work efficiently and lets me decide the best way, place and time to do that. I’d like to be self-employed, but haven’t come up with the right way to do that yet.

Last night I was at dinner with my boss and another colleague. My boss said he doesn’t see himself ever retiring ever. He enjoys working and wouldn’t know what he would do instead. I offered him my job. I’d love to retire. They picked on me for that, saying “You’ve only been working 8 years, eight? What would you DO?” Oh, I could come up with a lot of things I’d do. It wouldn’t involve being in an office on a sunny day. It makes me sad that I spend well over 90% of my life indoors. Maybe I should start sleeping in a hammock… that’d be the easier fix.

So the following presentation is about the future of work – I’m glad that I’ll be around to see it. I don’t have a problem spending a third of my life earning a living, but why does it have to be so strict about the location and hours?

The Future Of Work
View more documents from Jeff Brenman.

Posted in About Me, Work | Leave a response

Residual hearing post Medel CI

By Sara on November 10, 2009

I just had my 6 month mapping and will post about that soon. In the mean-time for those who are curious, here is a comparison of my implanted ear’s audiograms before and after the CI (residual hearing). Hearing With the CI is 15-25 across the board, 250 to 6000 (they don’t test 125 Hz but I can hear that low too).

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Responses

Saxophone Ensemble Video

By Sara on November 3, 2009

http://www.youtube.com/saxcase

Posted in Activities, Music | Leave a response

Playing with Google Wave…

By Sara on October 28, 2009

By now you’ve probably heard of Google Wave. It’s a new “collaboration tool” from Google designed to replace email some day… or something like that. Right now, to me, it just feels like a cross between threaded instant messaging, a multi-user forum, email, twitter, a chat room…

I’ve used instant messaging (IM) for years and years now, since 1996 when ICQ was your internet pager and AOL was just opening AIM up to people outside of the AOL network. Then came Yahoo IM. Now I use IM inside of Gmail with Google-Talk and AIM buddies only. My phone uses BeeJive to connect to AIM, Yahoo and Google-Talk. I use Twitter to chat with people too, many of them I don’t know very well, and I think an advantage of Twitter is you’re not expected to keep a conversation going beyond a sentence or two to each other. Email has that same feel, no need to reply if you don’t have more to say. No need to say goodbye when you’re leaving your computer. I think Wave captures that. It’s fast when you’re both present, but it’s saved for you to get later if you’re away.

Anyway. I’m all for a unified text-based collaboration platform, so if Google Wave ends up being that, that will be excellent. If it becomes mostly video then hopefully it’s easy to write along with the video to supplement those of us who can’t hear video perfectly.

It’s in an invite-only “Preview” right now. I may have a few invites, so let me know if you are interested. I expect it to spread to more people pretty fast in the next few weeks and months.

If you’re already on wave, you can use the box below to say hi :) If you aren’t, then you’ll probably see part of Google’s page about it.
[wave id="googlewave.com!w+BUIF1_uEA" color=”#0a0a0a” bgcolor=”#ffffff” font=”Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif” font_size=”10″ width=”400″ height=”700″]

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Responses

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Welcome

Photo of Sara Looking out a Window

I'm a 30-something year old girl originally from upstate NY and now living in central Virginia. My background is in mechanical engineering and I worked full time as an engineer for 8 years. In 2010 I quit my job and started a laser engraving business.

I lost my hearing at age 14 and have been using hearing aids since then. In April 2009 I received my first cochlear implant. That went really well so in December 2009 I got the second. The CIs are what prompted me to start writing publicly - but I try to cover other things as well.

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A little music…