Some of the sounds Tammy listened to during the initial programming of the processor were soft and others loud but it "didn't hurt to hear them at all." Next, Bob brought out a sound rating chart labeled 1 through 10, with "1" being not noticeable, "2" just noticeable, and "10" being the loudest. A "5" was considered the most comfortable level. Bob wanted Tammy to listen until the sound reached what she thought was the most comfortable level, or at "5." As Tammy listened and provided feedback, Bob tweaked each program.
At first the voices seemed to have a "trailing" echo. The first voice she heard was "fairly clear" but robotic. The second voice trailing behind it sounded normal, but soft or distant like a whisper. It was still difficult to understand speech without lipreading at this time. Although Tammy had learned that most people with CI’s report hearing beeps, she wasn't hearing beeps and it sounded more like "bubbles." Voices in the beginning were slightly unclear while environmental sounds were clear.
Things were going so well that Bob decided to try an interesting test. He covered his mouth and said the days of the week and months of the year in mixed-up order and Tammy had to try to repeat back what she heard. She understood everything except Tuesday and Thursday, which she kept getting mixed up because of the T and TH sounds. Impressed, Bob declared Tammy was "ready to join the world."
In the Hotel
Tammy could hear music playing in the hotel courtesy van, but not clearly. Her husband said it was on really low. In the hotel she had to keep asking her husband what she was hearing because there were so many sounds at once it sounded loud. For example, the noise in the hallways and in the room turned out to be in-room air conditioners. She could hear (but not understand) the voices of people farther down the hallway.Already, although voices were not yet clear, Tammy could, with the aid of lipreading, understand the voices of her husband, the audiologist, and anyone else who spoke directly to her. In fact, when she had to find ice for sodas, she stopped and asked a complete stranger for directions. She understood the hearing person perfectly and he didn't always look directly at her! What a difference from before the implant, when she would have not been able to do that alone, or she would have had to bluff and pretend that she understood when she didn't. Tammy was totally floored and kept thinking, "I don't remember it ever being like this!"
While sightseeing in Boston, Tammy stopped and asked hearing people for directions three times on the noisy street she walked on - and understood each time despite the noise! At an IMAX theatre, the music was "just beautiful." Walking to dinner to a restaurant, Tammy heard crickets. They were just as she remembered them as a child. In the restaurant she heard silverware tinkling, herself and other people nearby eating and drinking, people talking in nearby booths, and even people coming through doors. The ultimate experience was hearing the sound the paper made when peeling it off a butter pat. The sound was so startling that her reaction made her husband and child roll with laughter.
By the end of the first day, Tammy noticed that she could hear the phone dial tone, the clacking of keys on her ogo cell phone (so loud that she decided she would not use it in public anymore), and observed that brushing teeth, water dripping, and using the toilet all made noise.
Second Day of Activation
Trying the BWPDay two of activation brought more programming, and Tammy was given the Body Worn Processor (BWP) and lots of accessories. This time the testing and programming was done with the BWP instead of the BTE processor. The BWP is a small pager style box worn on the hip with a wire going up under a shirt and under the hair to the headpiece. It comes inside a nice case and clips to your belt and is very similar to a music player. The BWP had a sensitivity dial for drowning out background noise so voices can be focused on. Like the Auria BTE, it can have three programs, which can be the same or different from those in the Auria.
Tammy and Bob decided to program the BWP with all three of the same programs. On the second day, Dorothy Eisenhower from Tufts and Pat Slater from Maine, both of whom would help Tammy with aural habilitation over the next few weeks, joined them. Tammy found that if she provided more input and described sounds as much as possible, the programming/mapping got better each time. Her goal was to eliminate the echo sounds from voices. To Tammy, the echoing noises "sounded like I was being hunted by that masked Jason in Friday the 13th. All those oooohh ooooh ahhhh ahhh shhhh sssshhh noises freaked me out."
Goodbye Echos
