Last Sunday, I had my 1st appointment since activation. As usual, I arrived there bright and early late. Waited for about 15 minutes before a nurse shoved a blank audiogram into my hand and told me to go get tested first.

I went down to the audiology department and waited for another 20 minutes before I was tested by a friendly audiologist (she’s new). Judging from her facial expressions (yup, she’s fresh outta school alright – pro-tip: learn to develop a poker face when testing deafies, we can read you like a picture book) I’m not able to catch most of the tones she generated with the new ear.

Then off to my SD test, or speech discrimination. Now how does that work? Basically, the tester (what do you call them anyway?) starts breathing heavily into a microphone like a prank caller and carefully enunciates selected words and word pairs. Those words were selected by a bunch of smart people who know that we won’t use them in everyday speech….but I digress.

I’m supposed to repeat those words after him. Test was done in Arabic, I insisted on English because I know for a fact that I’m better at it than Arabic. But Arabic it is and I got an abysmal 45% score on my speech discrimination. Which meant that I can recognize only 45 out of 100 words given on the test (or something like that).

Back up I go to meet my audiologist, did I tell you I like that woman? She’s the one who boosted me into the bionic world and helped me all throughout the journey. Great doc, really. I’ll be sure to dedicate an entire post about her one day.

She glanced down at my score and exclaimed, “FORTY FIVE PERCENT?! MY GOODNESS MASHALLAH, YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?!”

I was frankly surprised at her reaction and I laughed nervously, “Yeah I know, it’s crap. But I told them I could do better in English…You know very well that I…” and she interrupts, “No! This is excellent! Someone who was activated just 5 days ago after nearly 9 years of not hearing scores a 45% on his SD. That’s amazing!”

I puffed up my chest and wanted to jump up on her desk and strut like a rooster.

Nah that was all in my head.

But yes apparently I did really well with my speech thing and she insisted on meeting her in a week to fine tune my right ear even further. We did a bit of adjustments that day and I’m told to try out the 2 new programs. What she did was pretty much switch the garden hose of sound into a blasting fire hose of sound.

I can handle it…I think.

I’m teaching myself to use the older, right side processor less and less daily. I need to get the newer left side up to par before I can keep both on at all times.

I still get serious auditory overload, yes that’s really a thing. It’s comparable to going to a rock concert and you come back home with ears ringing, head buzzing and body humming ready to blow a gasket. I get cranky, become even more quieter than I usually am and I always prefer to be alone for a while.

You may know it as sensory overload, a common enough phenomenon that’s occurring on a daily basis, thanks to modern technology.

So up until my next appointment, I’ll grit my teeth and keep dragging myself by the elbows towards the goal.

For those of you hearing, take a moment and ask yourselves – Do I take my hearing for granted? Am I thankful for it?

Go out and don’t just hear, listen.

You really don’t know what you’re missing.