Leaves :)

Hello everyone,

It has been a while since I reported. I have a few new sounds to report! My brother and sister in law was in town a few weeks ago with my twin nieces and nephew. As you can see I have posted my first photo of my cochlear implant with my brother's. Now we look a little more alike :).

The first thing we did when they arrived was drive in the minivan to a park near by. I was sitting in the front seat giving directions, which is hilarious because I am TERRIBLE at directions! Anyways, my twin nieces and nephew LOVE to talk and they were very excited about heading to the park. They started asking a lot of questions and usually I have to turn around to face them to understand what they are saying. For the first time, I was able to look straight ahead and answer their questions. This was when my family noticed how well I was hearing!

Other new sounds... I was drinking out of a fruit box (yes, I still like fruit boxes just like a kid) and I heard an unusual sound, then I figured out that it was me sucking the juice out of the box. It is loud! Last night, I heard the click of the buttons when pressing the remote to change the channels. A little annoying!

The sounds I enjoyed the most happened last week when I was on a walk. It was a gorgeous fall day and the leaves were starting to fall on the ground and there was a little breeze. As I was walking, I heard a scraping noise and I looked around to see if I could figure it out. Sure enough, I saw a dried up leaf moving across the pavement. It was so bizarre that something so small could make such a loud noise.

Afterwards, I stomped through the leaves and it made such a loud crunching noise. It sounded so crisp! Then, I sat on a bench in the middle of the park and heard the leaves rustling in the trees! That was my favorite of all since the visual audiogram (a chart that shows hearing loss) that I have used with my students had a visual image of "leaves rustling" to indicate what a high frequency sounds like. I have always wondered what rustling leaves would sound like, it brought tears to my eyes when I finally heard it. I can't wait to hear the sounds of winter!

My latest sound discovery happened today when I was at work. I was in the office with my other co-worker and friend, Amy. She is the other member of the team with a hearing loss. Amy has a mild to severe high frequency hearing loss and wears hearing aids. Most of the time, she hears much better than I do, but today I was able to hear something she couldn't. This was a little funny. I think I have bionic hearing now! For the past month, I have heard an unusual tap sound occurring almost every second. I have repeatedly asked staff what it was and they could not identify the sound. Today I finally figured it out! It was the second hand on the wall clock!