Activation Day!

So, I got my nifty new ear turned on today. It was a rough morning due to me trying to make it there on time but that doesn't matter- what matters is... well, my initial impressions! I'm sure you're all curious. So here I go-

It is now about 12 hours since I officially became bionic. It started off quite unpredictably-because there were no bells or whistles (Both figuratively and in my head!). I was just talking to my mom and Tina was fiddling with the computer. With no warning, I heard a bunch of high pitched noises- VERY high. I kept signing to my mom for a few moments before I realized, "Hey, I'm hearing things!" It wasn't AMAZING but at the same time it was.


It was 100% PURE sound. Not amplified sound or vibrations. It was undeniably IN my head. I couldn't have mistaken it for vibrations, like I was told some people get instead of sound, when they're first activated. It was high pitchedness running through my synapses at thousands of rates per second..

My poor brain was just reeling to the tune of ...well, no tune. Just crazy beeps! And my emotion was, "Thank God it works!" and then, "I don't want to be a downer but I really hope it gets better than this?? What I'm hearing is downright weird. It's nothing like my hearing aid!"
I became elated, though, when Tina stopped the computer programming (those crazy beeps! I was eager to hear OTHER sounds). She let my ear loose into the "real world" that was pen tapping, her talking, my knuckles popping, and.... that forever elusive Sound. What sound? Well, it's been one I've been chasing for a long time, forever disappointed when even as loud as people were making it, my ears still couldn't cross that bridge. Oh, the bridge was there- or perhaps it was finally completed when I got my implant- but either way, I found the elusive "Shhh."

I was already excited when I heard how LOUD the pen cap was and how it seemed to "make sense." It wasn't some high pitched noise- it just sounded like a pen cap. Mind you though, it's VERY different than hearing with a hearing aid. The hearing aid's sounds seem to "make more sense" than the implant.

The implant sounds VERY artificial and I miss the not-so-subtle hum of traffic. With only the implant in and no hearing aid, I no longer hear the generalized sounds of the world around me- traffic humming, people talking indistinctly, and general atmosphere sounds. I hear on a microscopic level. Why are pencils scratching coming to me better than anything else? Odd. I miss it a lot, but I keep sighing in relief that I still have my right ear to slip a hearing aid in lovingly, if ever the artificialness becomes too much for me. But it hasn't happened yet.

Okay, it has crossed my mind once or twice... or maybe quite a few times. But I refuse to give in. The magnet remains clipped to my head, bonding to its unseen twin on the other side of my skin. Sounds are odd, but sound is SOUND. It is rich.

It was wildly odd to hear myself laugh and talk- it was so unexpectedly painfully high that I automatically tried to lower my pitch. I trust that I will learn how to do this in time; for I finally HEAR just how different it is from others' voices. My own voice makes me want to wince. Others' voices, however, do not bother me. I delight in hearing the subtleties. I heard whistling clearly and my knuckles popping (sorry, it's a bad habit I continue to entertain)- for the first time in my life, perhaps.

As for that "Shhh" sound, I asked Tina what the main "6 ling sounds" were and I was secretly afraid I wouldn't be able to hear them when she said them. Eee, shh, and oo are three of them. I heard ALL of them. Crystal clear as if it were a crystal glass shattering on a stone floor. Shhhhh.......perhaps one of the best things I've heard in my whole life, no kidding.

I was reiterant with the happily elated statement, "In all my 19 years it has never been that clear or distinct to me!"

What else did I hear? My sidekick phone sliding open! Woah! What a weird sound and yes, annoying. But not annoying enough to stop me from happily closing and opening it repeatedly. Who would have thought it was THAT loud? My mom asked if I could hear the keys; I couldn't. But as I type right now, I hear it. I hear myself blowing out air. Again, who would've thought it was THAT loud?

Color me surprised. What else.... paper! Paper.... UGH. Oh, and I heard the difference between my shoes hitting carpet and the metal lining on the stairs when I was running up my summer place's stairs. I fear trying my sax in a way because of the many ways it could pierce my nerves, yet I am very excited to try. I haven't listened to music deliberately yet- I think I'll save that for a time when I can be with Ian. Just as long as he doesn't play the banjo! Now, he has wonderful musical skills but with a hearing aid, I dislike the banjo at close range. I am curious at so many things- will my taste in the banjo change, being one of them.

My mom was thrilled and surprised I could hear. My sister and I shared a few minutes of bellyaching laughter when my mom excitedly asked, "Can you hear this?" and then said, "Yeees" very quietly but she slid her tongue over her lips, accidentally making a weird expression in the process. My sister and I couldn't hear the "Yees" and both of us only saw her tongue sliding over her lips. Confused, Tori and I stared at each other and both erupted into insane laughter that evolved into tears as we both went, "Mom! We can't hear your TONGUE on your lips!"

I then told my sister, "Ooo, I can hear this; can you?" while rubbing my fingers together- except they weren't together at all. It was just air between them. We cracked up again at the thought of such Tao-like sounds becoming vastly within my reach. With extraordinary hearing like that, I would easily hear sounds no human has ever heard before.

But? Some of the giddiness vanished when I was hit hard with CRUCIAL Lesson Number 1 of using an implant when I wasn't even out of the hospital parking yet! I was fiddling with my implant because I wanted the volume louder, while my mom was paying the parking fee.

I put it on and immediately within a timespan of perhaps 2.6 seconds I got the worst shock to my poor brain and auditory nerve ever. It was beyond rock-concert and jackhammer right by your ears while you're holding a megaphone to your ears loud. Instinctively, I grabbed the implant off my head as fast as I could and screamed, "SHIT!" which reverberated in the cold underground of the parking lot. Thankfully, I couldn't hear my high pitched scream or I would've probably fallen to my knees. Tears welled in my eyes involuntarily. I thought of much worse four letter words while trembling inwardly at the other thought in my head- "How the HELL do I put this back on my head after THAT?!"

My mom and sister jumped and my mom immediately scolded me for my hardly eloquent nor verbose expression of pain/shock but softened after I told her what had happened. I put it back on with much caution.

During lunch, I was subtly disappointed. My mom said it was so loud that she couldn't hear HERSELF talk but I thought, "It isn't loud in here yet I can't hear her.... and I miss the sounds of people talking, etc, that I'm used to getting when I walk into this pizza parlor."

Lesson Number Two: No, I don't hear the humming of cars or my favorite "environmental noises" that I have become so keenly attuned and used to. No, sound does NOT make much sense right now. It all almost sounds the same- a weird high pitched sound, unless I actually listen to differentiate. Water running sounds high pitched. Silverware? High pitched but worse than water. Tinfoil? Like chewing it, except in hearing form. And MUCH higher than the water. But, I remain hopeful and intrigued.

I still steel my mental muscles as hard as they can firm themselves, when I bring the magnet close to my head and then that moment where sound leaps brilliantly into my head. The sounds- so HIGH pitched and distinct, yet for this first day, seeming as though it's only caused by two SMALL things (at the most) that would hardly raise any notice to anyone else- instead of the full range of things that cause sound.

I am going to ask Tina, for sure, to lock it so it can't go full volume by accident and give me temporary Tourette's Syndrome again.

Quiet rooms are the only rooms I will put my implant on in before venturing out to the real world, right now, otherwise it is like plunging into an icy cold lake of sound. I look around with caution- somebody might be moving silverware which is not something I want to hear right when I put it on. It might feel good after the fact, but during the fact, it only feels unpleasant.

But it is not enough to deter me from wanting to see if I will hear cars again, and IN combination with my magnificent newly-heard sounds! Perhaps I will wear my hearing aid and my implant both, but right now I am only using the implant so my brain can't jump to its preferred default.

I plan to try and see if I can do the pitch test soon, but one thing I'll say- it IS tiring which I didn't expect! But I don't tire of showing off to people just what I can hear and finding out more and more, through their questions, of just what I CAN hear and decode.

I'm going to go poke at my sister's guinea pigs right now and see if I can evoke the whistling and squeaks that I have never heard clearly before in my life. =)

Cyborgically Yours!

Cyborgs

From Wikipedia:

Some theorists cite such modifications as contact lenses, hearing aids, or intraocular lenses as examples of fitting humans with technology to enhance their biological capabilities; however, these modifications are no more cybernetic than would be a pen, a wooden leg, or the spears used by chimps to hunt vertebrates.^[5] Cochlear implants that combine mechanical modification with any kind of feedback response are more accurately cyborg enhancements.

My take on it: I mentally went, "Yay!" and smiled when I read that those with an implant are "more accurately cyborgs." I've always liked having something unique, and this is definitely unique.

What's interesting to me is that even though implants have been around for awhile, the notion of cyborgs still seems so "new" when applied to humans in today's modern world, even though many instances of "bionic" people have been found in Star Trek, comics (Iron Man), movies (Terminator, anyone?) and books dating as old as 1843 (Edgar Allan Poe, among some others).

Perhaps it is that nuance of meshing man and "machine" that seems so foreign. In this age where practically every white collar person seems to have a bluetooth, where a great majority of homes have their own wifi networks, and kids as young as 7 have their own cell phones, it is still a shock to the mind to think of combining two such different organisms.

My ear right now, despite its apparent deadness is nevertheless still pulsing with warm wet tissue and energy, expediting trillions of cells a day. My body, with its own intricate system and its rapid-fire neurons, could be seen to be a form of computer.

My body doesn't speak in zeros and ones, however.

The implant does. It is hard, strong, and designed to go for my whole life without having to rebuild itself constantly as my body does every minute. IT speaks in zeros and ones. It screams in high-speed binary, highly more supreme than my body has shown itself to be.

My ears- The ears that probably have not heard below 30db ever, the ears that I used to imagine were struggling to "wake up" its nerves in some contrived yet noble attempt to restart, those ears will not be the same again. And who is to thank? Many scientists, researchers, and coders.

Not only does it take doctors to fix me, but it takes programmers to dream up and stimulate the fragility of sound.

One line of code messed up, and I will hear only the high frequency hisses of the orange electric lights overhead.

I did computer programming for a short time, and in that short amount of time, I learned how much there was to getting a program to do something as simple as produce one line of input: "Hello."

How many lines of code does it take to transform my ears?

I don't know, but I do know it takes only one line of code to make me bionic.

The military has long envisioned a possibility of meshing machine with man, to make better, faster, more dangerous soldiers. But it is the regular civilians that are making these strides more often.

It is the infant that recognizes its mother's voice for the first time. It is the old grandfather that gets an implant and can finally hear more clearer than he has in years. It is the 20-somethings that saw the whole wide world open to them, only to be dismayed at the fact their own world was closing up to them slowly due to their hearing loss. It is the people that realized their ears just weren't cutting it for them. It is me finally deciding to see what an implant could do for me, at barely 19.

We are desperately envisioning a new standard for ourselves, even if they are "ordinary" standards. We long to hear music, wind, laughter, birds, words and in the process we become more than just organic matter. In a sense: more than "human." We adjust our programs to fit with our environment. They are real programs that can be wiped out to have newer, more innovative ones placed in them. We are constantly facing being "out of date."

When I get this implant, I face the fact I WILL become part-machine. My ears could be outdated, just like my laptop will probably be obsolete in a few years. But what's more likely is even if I become "outdated," my bionic ear will continue to work.

I know many people who still use Windows 2000, and it is "outdated" by now but they have found ways to update it and for them, it works. It gets what needs to be done, done. My friends and relatives' hearing may deteriorate with age or far too many rock concerts (for some of them!) but the chances are mine never will.

This is the greatest irony- that a profoundly deaf child may hear better than them one day.

This is a marvelous age- not the silver or gold age, but the titanium age. We digitally record shows, download music in minutes, and share movies from halfway around the world. When I was one, a cochlear implant would have looked strange. Today, it might get mistaken for a bluetooth or simply another electronic device.

I can buy an iPod and connect the music directly to myself.

The sound waves will go directly through my head in zeros and ones and I can't help but imagine colorful gold and blue currents happily reaching out at rapid-fire speeds to reach my brain, where my brain translates it all. (And not in zeros or ones, but in electrical currents.)

In actuality, there is no color. There is just pure information traveling at millions of bits a second.

I am electrical, and so are you. Our body sends currents, fires off neurons, travels up the brain stem, snakes up the spine, and all in all works as a marvelously programmed up-to-date machine.

The only difference is a part of my body will speak in zeros and ones. I will become a cyborg, unable to withstand heavy magnetic fields, but able to hear far much more than I have ever imagined. Yes, magnets will stick to my head. Yes, I can hear you but maybe I still won't understand what you're saying ever, still. Is it still worth it? I hope so.

I have always been a lover of sci-fi and an appreciator of robots. Now I get the chance to become part-machine.