At long last, today my implant was activated.

I had done enough research to know that this was not an instant “boom, you can hear!” solution. But none of that could really prepare me for what it is actually like. And since it’s different for everyone, reading this probably won’t prepare anyone else for their own experience, but I’ll do my best to describe it.

So after putting the processor on, the audiologist started turning on the electrodes in the implant in groups of four, telling me to tell her when I could hear anything at all. It was basically beep-like tones that increased in volume as she turned them up.

Nearly everything over a certain volume sounds exactly the same: an electronic “woo woo woo” sort of beepy sound with no variation in pitch. There’s a very few things that don’t sound like that: the clicking of my keyboard, my car’s turn signal, other cars whooshing past on the road. Those sound strange but closer to what they should be, though with an echo-y quality.

So now my job is to just wear the thing. I’ll try it with some audiobooks as well, reading along.

Naturally, because the universe really hates me, someone decided to schedule a work meeting immediately after my activation. Needless to say, the weird sounds in the implanted ear plus the sudden hearing loss I’ve been dealing with in the other ear made it insanely hard to understand what was going on.

I feel like my life has been nothing but my ears for the last two weeks, and to a slightly lesser extent, the last month (as it’s a month exactly since my surgery). Nearly every waking thought concerns how I’m hearing, both with the implant and with my (formerly) good ear. I’ve just finished my last dose of oral steroids for this latest hearing loss, and will probably have another shot in the ear on Monday, and I’ve been getting hyperbaric oxygen treatments as well (still no word on whether the insurance will actually pay for them). So far I haven’t seen much difference, although I’m at least not feeling as hopeless as I did last week.

I really, really want to go back to normal again, and not have my hearing be the center and focus of my life.

Edited to add: I just tried streaming an audio book directly to my implant while reading along with the text…and I could actually follow the words I was hearing! They’re not clear and sound robotic, but I could tell where I was in the text, even when it got a little ahead because I lost my place when Ray came to talk to me!

It’ll still be a long road to being able to understand what people are saying to me, but this is only day one. I’m excited!