Cold and Rainy? Must be exam time! :-(

Hey everybody, it's been a long time since I posted anything about me (and not about Clemson sports), so I thought I'd let y'all know what's going on.

It's pretty cold and rainy, and earlier today we had what could possibly have been snow flurries. It was so light that it certainly didn't stick, so it wasn't anything worth getting into a tizzy about.

I had a final in Engineering Graphics yesterday, and now I have no finals until next Tuesday. Then, I have three tests in the span of three days - Physics, Statics, and Calculus of Multiple Variables. So this time next week, I'll have just finished my last exam and I'll be sitting pretty looking at a GREAT time for winter break!

My implant has been awesome so far in cold weather. Sometimes my hearing aids break down in the cold or they just don't seem to function as well when there is a chill in the air. However, the implant continues to plug away and sound the same, whether it's hot, cold, rainy, or completely dry. It is awesome.

A friend of mine sent me an article from Wired magazine the other day. It was one of those articles that admittedly got me a little choked up at times because I could relate so well to the author. The author, one Michael Chorost, is a former hearing aid user (like me) who suddenly and inexplicably lost his remaining hearing (like me) and chose to regain his hearing through the use of a cochlear implant (like me, again!). The article is the story of his desire to regain his ability to hear certain music well and his frustrations at the initial shortcomings of his implant. Just like me, he found it to be a matter of time for his implant to start to clear up sounds, but even then, he felt like something was missing in his music listening experience, and this article is pretty much his description of that experience. You can find the article here. If you have the time, I would strongly encourage you to read this. There were several points in the article in which I would say to myself, "I couldn't have said it better!"

My implant does continue to get better. Before I received my implant, my experience of being around people was vastly different than it is now. Now, when I walk through a crowd of people (like when I'm walking across campus to class), I can actually hear and understand snippets of conversations around me. Words cannot describe how surreal it is for me to walk past a girl on her cell phone and - without even trying - actually hear what her describing how she just spent the entire day studying in the library. While I certainly am not trying to hear what these people are saying, I am finally coming to a point where I just can't help but hear certain things at certain times. Sometimes I just have to stop, look around, and say, now who just said that?! and then ,of course, congratulate myself on being able to hear it!

Even when I am driving my car at night with a passenger in the front seat, I can now actually carry on a conversation WHILE looking at the road in front of me (as opposed to looking at the passenger's lips). While I am unable to 'hear without looking' 100% of the time, my ability to do so has improved dramatically in the last few months!

It is a struggle for me sometimes to recognize that my capacity to hear has increased so dramatically. I have gotten so used to not being able to hear in certain situations that I have gotten to the point where I've pretty much given up to the idea that I won't be able to hear so I might as well not even try. However, I am now able to hear/understand well in many situations that I was unable to before, and even now I find that I have to remind myself that I can hear and I need to try and pay attention because I'll probably be able to understand it now. For example, I have never been able to hear the lyrics on the radio well, but occasionally now when I really concentrate, I'll be able to make out a few of the lines. This was near to impossible before I got my implant, and although it is still difficult now, it is clearly better. I have to remind myself when I hear a new song that I can actually attempt to listen for the words without the aid of written lyrics. The same goes for watching TV. I have gotten so used to having the captioning on that I feel like I can't watch a TV program without some sort of captioning. However, I watched a program the other day without closed captioning and could actually understand some (not all) of what was being said.

So, of course, things are going well for me. Each little triumph every day gives me so much more hope for my future. I can't tell you how exciting it is to continue to realize all the possibilities that are opening up for me and then to set forth in achieving them all.