Well fans....it's been 3 months since I've been activated and it has been WONDERFUL!! I have worn my CI (cochlear implant) and HA (hearing aid) everyday since activation and gaining NEW SOUNDS that I haven't heard in over 33 years. Today was the FIRST DAY of actually wearing my CI ALONE due to technical difficulties with my hearing aid....enjoy the adventure:

My head is READY to EXPLODE from all these NEW & EXISTING sounds I have heard today. Let me give a recap of my LISTENING SKILLS today...

In a previous conversation with a fellow CI user, Scott Moulton I was challenged to remove my hearing aid and solely rely on my cochlear implant. For those who don't know, I was activated on Feb. 18th, 2013 and as a school teacher, it has been often difficult to solely rely only on the implant as it was originally requested from my audiologists. But they understood my working situation and I used both the hearing aid and implant everyday, until TODAY! 

My hearing aid needs a tubing replacement and I'm holding out until next week's CI appt in another town (2 hours away). So I took upon Scott's challenge and decided for the next 3 days at school & home I will ONLY wear the implant (since hearing aid does keep cutting off). If I did that, Scott Moulton will run a mile each day that I left the aid at home and implant on! Well, today has been an ADVENTURE! So here are so many FIRSTS in hearing today, this is what I have heard: 

1) Understanding speech conversations as long as I am reading the lips or hearing simple words/sounds behind my back. 
2) Fingers tapping on the keyboard 
3) Rain drops outside my door (work in a trailer)/Rain dripping off the over hang (sounds like ping, ping, ping!) 
4) Air conditioner kicking on (humming sound) 
5) My coworker eating and SCRAPING her yogurt out of the plastic container with her spoon.
6) My students (sitting behind me) singing "I like to move, move it!" 
7) Telephone ringing 
8) Heard the bubbles going up in the water dispensing machine (that was cool!) 
9) Coworker patting her hands on her lap (that about drove me crazy) 
10) Student opening a cookie wrapper but kept twisting it (drove me crazy!) 
11) Hearing the announcements on the intercom but can't discriminate what they said...Coworker translated :)
12) Understanding my students' conversations when following their lips 
13) My OWN children talking in another room and can't understand them but recognize their voices.
14) Before coworker left, she did the 6 Ling sounds behind me at two different distances and I was able to DISCRIMINATE!! Yay!!

It has been an UNBELIEVABLE ride and I cannot wait to hear more and truly believe this is a MIRACLE in disguise when I haven't heard CLEARLY (or nearly as good as this) in over 33 years!!!