My Fifth Week
My Fifth Week
My friend and I drove up to Dallas to visit my nephew, Jamie and Michelle last weekend. I was very pleased to see Jamie's mother, Karen. Karen was curious to know if I could hear everything. I tried to use my voice to talk with her. Sometimes my voice gets so tired from not using it all these years. I have to practice breathing and talking at the same time with Lisa my speech therapist. She says I'm doing better. I didn't know it was such an art to say a whole sentence in one breath.
I visited my parents' home and some friends of theirs from Florida. I practiced using my voice to say: Hi Carl and Hello Alice before I got there to surprise them, they were surprised and got teary eyed. My parents, Carl and I went shopping and looked at different types of music players. They bought me a new jam box and cassette recorder. My mother played for me her favorite music by Johnny Mathis. She lent me some of his tapes. Soon I want to hear Elvis sing!
My friend promised she will make some tapes from several children books for me to listen and read along with, for my jam box so I can practice listening. I need to practice hearing as much as I practice using my voice - I feel like an infant - with a huge world of sound and I don't understand enough of it - fast enough.
I enjoyed going to speech therapy to practice closed-set sentences with lipreading and listening. An example of a closed-set is I listen to all the names of furniture in the living room and tell you what you said. It gives me context, and yet I have to listen hard and remember what the words sound like. Lisa said my neuro-memory will lengthen over time and with practice. That means my brain will begin to remember what words sound what way.
I've noticed that since the initial hook-up, I am less sensitive to sounds. At first sounds startled me and seemed loud, now they just seem like sounds. They still command my attention, but I am not distracted by them. I am even listening to music at work while I type. At first I had a hard time concentrating on work with all the sounds everywhere, but now I feel used to it and not so sensitive.
