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Tammy Gets an Implant - Six Months Later
A totally changed life

From Tammy Beaulieu, About.com Guest

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Face to face communication can almost appear daunting at times. We don't know how people will react or share information. I still get confused and there's nothing I like better than communicating with people who can communicate with me straight from the hip. I have come to learn far more about myself. I like people who are straight and direct. I do not work well in environments with hidden meanings. I find it an incredible waste of time and energy. So through all of this experience, I have grown and become an individual!

An interesting challenge - shifting my Mustang Cobra SVT. I am embarassed to share that I had to re-learn the art of shifting by way of watching the tachometer versus listening when to shift -- over again. In the past I always had to watch the tachometer and was instructed to shift on or above 2. This never got a rise out of the car. Now I can really listen to it and make the car do anything I want it to. For those muscle car lovers, use your imagination. Now I seriously feel like a driver with a means to live!

The newest, most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard:

Kissing, rain falling on a skylight, my daughter telling me she loves me and that I’m the best mommy in the world, the sound of my CI when it “turns on”, frogs singing, Keith Urban’s Making Memories of Us and all other “new” music. MUSIC, MUSIC, MUSIC!! I love deciphering the differences in people’s voices. Everyone has their own special sound and it makes meeting new people truly interesting and exciting. Ringing phones are quite interesting because each type of phone makes it own type of ringing noise. Cell phones have ring tones and they’re fun to use but I find them extremely annoying in restaurants. In the 70’s we didn’t have cell phones and refrigerators made huge humming noises. Today they are quieter!

I no longer find cars passing as annoying a sound since the day of activation and many sounds that were once so abrupt now appear as “white noise”. Meaning they blend in to the envioronment unless you concentrate and listen for them.

The most annoying sounds I’ve ever heard: Paper crumpling, fingernails on a chalkboard, the commercial of the people in the workplace dancing when the boss is out of the room, (you know the one where they dance queerly), I used to not be able to hear computers booting up (they whir).

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