The Bionic Life — 1 Week After Activation

Today, after leaving my audiologist’s office in Philadelphia, I sat in traffic on the Walt Whitman Bridge and marveled at the rivets in the bridge’s support towers and contemplated the whole concept of suspension bridges in general. “The Walt” is about two miles long and is my favorite bridge that was named after a poet.

Yeah, I know Ben Franklin was a poet too, and while I admire Franklin and consider him to be The Renaissance man, I have a particular fondness for Whitman. To me, Song of Myself is one of The Masterpieces of American Poetry, ranking right up there with Dylan’s It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), Ginsberg’s Howl (or my personal favorite, Sunflower Sutra), or anything Sandberg, Frost, or Dickinson could conjure. So to cross a bridge named in the man’s honor is always a privilege, even if the traffic was bumper-to-bumper at just past 3pm. As I sat there in traffic pondering the rivets, wondering just how many rivets it takes to build a bridge like that and how the hell they even build a bridge like that in the first place, and listening to a 1974 recording of The Band performing The Weight (one of the Great Canadian Poems), my mind drifted to the tiny piece of electronic magic that is in/attached to my head. It’s miraculous that we’re able to hear the voice of Charley Patton (whose music served as the soundtrack for my drive into Philly) or drive an automobile over a bridge named after a poet, but for a person (me) to have a device attached to/implanted in my head that enables me to hear (albeit somewhat strangely at the moment) is truly a marvelous thing to ponder. Less than six months ago, I was completely, totally, utterly, absolutely deaf in my right ear. Today, I can hear again. If that ain’t miraculous, I don’t know what is.

But enough of my ruminations on the magnificence of my hardware, the universe, and everything else. I’m here to document my experience as a cochlear implant recipient (aka bionic man), so here’s what’s up. Since my activation last Friday (March 13, 2015), I have experienced some pretty awful pain at the implant site where the magnet attaches to my head. I figured out a few days ago that the reason I was in so much pain was that my magnet was too strong. I spoke with my audiologist today, and we switched out the magnets in my sound processors for weaker magnets and that should fix the issue. She adjusted the settings on my processor as well and showed me how to use more of the features of the remote control to provide a better hearing experience. (I’m not up to the Bluetooth part of our program yet, but I’ll be there soon enough.) At this point, I can’t hear especially clearly, but I’m certainly hearing. I spend at least one hour a day training my brain to understand the signals from the implant by reading a book and listening to the audio version of the book at the same time. I’m working my way through David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. I figure by the time I’m done with that mammoth tome, my brain should be well on its way to being fully trained, or damn close to it. Actually, the book is about 70 hours long, and the brain training is going to take a lot more than 70 hours, but I’ll certainly be off to a good start by the time I’ve finished Wallace’s magnum opus.

So that’s the physical part of the thing. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the psychological portion of the whole thing. Losing half of one’s hearing (especially for one so obsessed with music as myself) is devastating. No, it’s not the worst thing that could happen, but it ranks right up there on the list of significant life events that could cause great emotional stress. Some days, I’m okay with everything and accepting my situation. Other days, however, it’s not as easy. Some days, like today, I find myself feeling like I’m missing out on a significant part of what made me into who I am. And then, when I think it, I realize just how short life really can be and how I don’t have any real problems to speak of. Sure, it sucks, but bad things happen to people all the time, and as long as we’re on this side of the ground, we’ve got a chance to make a difference. So that’s where I’m at... Somewhere in the murky emotional swamp between self-pity and self-realization. I guess that means I’m getting better with it all, learning how to handle it a little better. Either that, or I’m just fooling myself and I’ve really not dealt with this at all.

Oh well, whatever. There will (hopefully) be plenty of time to comtemplate that sort of stuff…