My life renewed!

I haven't been on here to update so allow me to do so now. Since the last time I was on here I have had a major change happen in my life. I can hear again!!! After 10 long years I finally can hear again! I got my cochlear implants!!! But as amazing as it is to be able to hear again it's not without it's complications. It's far from perfect. I'm still missing a lot of sounds, it's difficult to understand speech or whatever unless I have visual cues. I've attempted to talk on the phone and I miss a lot of what is said though I hear them I don't quite understand what is being said. I still watch TV with captions and when I attempt to listen to music it is usually music I remember very well and can follow along. I know that eventually this all will be a thing of the past. I've been told it all takes time. I have many adjustments to make and I have to get used to it. I've only been activated for about 3 weeks now, it's not an overnight process but I am making strides much faster than if I were someone who never had hearing before. I never knew what to expect when I planned to get cochlear implants and it wasn't anything I could ever prepare for. But I am extremely happy. I can understand people when they talk to me, I can listen to some music, I can enjoy TV with sound on. Is it perfect? No. Will it ever be? We'll see. None the less, this is an amazing experience! I never thought I would hear anything ever again! Look at me now! I expect things are going to improve in my life, part because I got my hearing back again, mostly because I already started my ball rolling for better things long ago. I go back to college in August. First time going to school with hearing. I'll still have a captionist to help me make sure I don't miss anything. I don't quite trust my hearing as of just yet, but I will get there. It takes time. Months, maybe even a year or so before things start to sound more natural to me, but I will get there. One thing is for sure, I don't regret my decision to get cochlear implants and one year from now, I will get my left ear done so that I can hear from both ears for the first time in my life! I just can't believe I'm hearing things again! As I sit her typing, I'm hearing the clicking of the keyboard, and things in the background. It might be just noise but it's such a sweet sound to my ear. One thing that I love about having cochlear implants aside from hearing again. I have complete control over everything. Volume, sensitivity, when I want to hear or when I want complete silence. I also will be seeing my audiologist regularly for awhile, making adjustments to the sounds, volumes, and frequencies. It will take time but it will all improve drastically. It so amazing. It simply attaches to my hear magnetically and sends all the sounds through my head into my hearing nerve directly to my head! How cool is that?! And to think, just one year ago, I hadn't even dreamed this would happen. Not this soon.

Thanks for following my blog my fellow readers, and I will try to continue to update as things happen. You will be a part of this journey right along with me. :)

Changes coming!

Since the last time I posted a blog I have been going through the process of getting my Cochlear implants. I've been through many tests, all which have been a little upsetting. The last time I had hearing tests, I could still hear somewhat. Now I can't hear anything at all! Well, that will soon change once I get the cochlear implants and I cannot wait!! One of the most grueling parts of this process was making a choice of which company I want to receive my cochlear implant from. Cochlear America or Advanced Bionics. This was a very hard decision because they are very similar. There are many differences in options and things like that but they do pretty much the same thing. In the end I chose to go with Advanced Bionics because their options were more suited to my needs. I am active and like to go to Kings Island or go swimming. With AB I had the option to have two processors so I could go with the Naida CI for normal use and the Neptune for swimming, riding roller coasters, etc. As far as how they sound, I won't know until I have them turned on. It is virtually impossible to know which would sound better, Cochlear or AB since they all work differently for everyone. But AB claims they have a wider range in sound which would make music sound much better, but again, I won't know until I have them turned on. Now I'm only waiting for the insurance to give the green light which shouldn't be too long hopefully. They told me approximately 6 weeks from my appointment on March 26. If that's true, then I will have the surgery on May 29 and be activated sometime in June. If not, then I won't have the surgery until mid to late July and be activated in August. I'm hoping to be activated before July since my daughter's birthday is July 3. That would be a great birthday gift for her don't you think? :)

Time for school!

Well this week I finally started back to college. I used to go to college at Southern State Community College. I loved it there, however, I wrecked my car awhile back and lost my license and was unable to get transportation to and from there. So I had to transfer closer to home where I could get transportation. Now I go to Clark State Community College. It's much different and I have to readjust to college life all over again. Some things I like about this school, some things I don't. I like that I will not only get my degree in computer networking but I will also get my certifications too! I'm very happy about that as Southern State didn't offer that at all! What I don't like is all the time that I had attended Southern State, all the credit hours I put into them won't transfer up here! Very few of my classes and credit hours will transfer and so I have to go here at Clark State almost as long as I would normally, which sucks! Oh well, at least I got back into it and will FINALLY be finishing my degree and can graduate! Nothing can stop me now! Well unless I screw up and stop myself again. But I don't foresee that happening again. My main concern is balancing sleep, school, studying, homework, and everyday life. I don't know what I would do if I had to work!! I can't wait till I can work again but hopefully that won't happen until I'm almost finished with school. I really hope that I can find and get hired on through someone in the area, doing what I am going to school all this time for. Man, I've been going to school for over 3 years already! It's supposed to be a 2 year course! But life got in my way several times, be it my fault or not. Now I have to go almost 2 more years for the same degree! It's only an associates degree at that! Not Bachelors. Sigh...well, all I can do is keep going and see what it brings me. I'm hoping to make it in life finally. Doing what I love to do, working around computers. Maybe one day I can help make a better network connection that we all crave. Data traveling online to and from computers are getting larger and larger. Movies, games, you name it! We need something better than what we have! But we need the network mainframe and computers to handle the traffic. I think game developers such as Microsoft and Sony have the right idea, streaming data while having instant access to it to speed up wait times but there has to be a better way to do these things. I would love to see a day when downloading things are a thing of the past and when you download something or even stream something it would be instantaneous! Maybe one day. Look how far we've come so far! It's not as far fetched as you would believe and people like myself will be working on it to make it better. And I'm doing all this while being deaf. Can't wait till I get cochlear implants! Life will be so much easier!!! Well, till next time bloggers. :)