Chapter 12
Well, I have been born again. No, I am not referring to the fundamentalist way of being a reborn Christian, although my relationship with God is as rock solid as ever. I have been explained by my audiologist at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, Dayna Hume, as well as by Melissa Wally, the Canadian Director of Med-El, the manufacturer of the actual implant product (who came to witness my getting ‘turned on’) that I was going to regress as a bona fide infant. Of course, my immediate response was asking if that meant I could get all the benefits of that as well, by allowing my most extreme child-like and unadulterated id could come to the clear surface, allowing me to act as impulsive, self-centered and uninhibited as I wanted to. Sadly, that one drew a negative, but I still secretively assured myself that this pleasantly surprising declaration of infancy will grant me at least a few opportunities to act out at least a few wonderful childish behaviors that are cruelly stripped from us when we become what society refers to as 'mature, responsible' adults. Boy, wasn't it great during those younger years when we could do absolutely whatever we wanted to do, all we had to endure was a harsh scolding or perhaps even a stiff spanking, but at least we didn't get put away somewhere such as a mental institution.
The type of regressing rebirth I am referring
to is that I am learning how to hear all over again, the same way an infant
does. Unlike just about every other cochlear implant recipient, I have absolutely
no sight, so I suspect being unable to size up people's non-verbal cues and
their internal reactions to my bench test will allow me a few more of the
pleasures of my id, and I want to lay it out on the table, I had one hard-nosed
id. Most people let go of it, no that's not right, most people submerge
it by the age of five or so, when the rational ego develops and social
expectancies carry greater weight, but I think I was about twenty. Ahhh,
the good ol' days, I knew there was going to be something really great about
this cochlear implant, especially when it was activated, or more accurately, turned
on n
A cochlear implant device
is actually composed of two units-the internal unit that is surgically
implanted and comprising of a quarter sized magnet that has two three inch
electronic coils emanating from, each end of this cord having the actual
electrodes that are embedded into the damaged cochlea and the external unit
consisting of the speech processor and energy source which will be described
later. It is when this speech processor
is applied and turned on that a cochlear implant (hereafter referred to as CI)
recipient is truly getting ‘turned on’.
Let me start by portraying what happened on Day One, at H-Hour 13 hours 15
minutes (we got a little behind because of a computer problem and the MedEl
Director, Melissa, just arriving from
Canada, needed to wolf down her lunch), on Tuesday September 2. I was
accompanied by my incredibly supportive partner and soul-mate Sharron as well
as my great friend Pete Rossetti, a fraternity brother and one of my
roommates at UMass. After an exchange of pleasantries, the first task at
hand was to be sure the implant was working. This involved a simple
process of placing a magnet behind my ear so it would grasp the magnet imbedded
in my skull, the external magnet be connected by an extension cord to the
computer. This part was easy as I had to do nothing, perhaps a warm up
for my regressing infancy.
After determining
that the implant was indeed functioning, the next step was to attach my newest
anatomical additions to my beloved skull that contains all those brilliant
brain cells (id regression step #2-overly self-centered narcissm, or plainer
terms, an incredibly swelled up head). But the speech processor wasn't
turned on yet, not by a long shot, there was still a lot of work to do just yet
(at the mention of work, this put a slight damper on my id-I was tempted to
have a full blown temper tantrum, but thought better of it or I would lose the
whole ball of wax, so some thinking through was necessary here). What we
had to do was to get each of the twelve electrodes that were delicately, but
snuggly, encoiled into my useless cochlea functioning at a comfortable
level. Each electrode representing a particular band of frequencies that
control a sound’s pitch was activated, and the task was to allow the loudness
increase to a maximum point of the most comfortable level. So the first
electrode was activated, and The Big Bang began.
When I first heard
the sound of the first electrode, I thought 'Sonuvagun!
The implant really worked. I am actually hearing something.' I was
in total ecstatic charge here, getting back to my regressive role by being
demanding as I wanted to be, sometimes giving a thumbs up when I wanted the
volume cranked up more , or by simply saying words quite familiar to me 'more,
more, please give me more'. After we finished the first two electrodes, I
was getting impatient (id step #3), so I started speeding up the process by
having them jump from one electrode to another without requiring a verbal alert
of such.
It was when I got
to about the fourth electrode that I started to get slightly choked up and had
to slow down the turn-on by taking a few stabilizing deep breaths. I
guess I forgot that I was granted permission for rebirth. But it was at
the fourth electrode that it dawned on me that I had never heard this sound
before, never in all 56 years of my life. It was an incredible
experience, but slightly bewildering as well, actually mind-blowing. It
was like, as I explained to Peter later, what I had imagined a LSD trip to be, except Peter nor I ever dropped acid, I swear. But this fascinating mind-boggling
experience kept escalating right up to the twelfth electrode,
I really thought I was kind of getting high from the endogenous sensations, not
just the exhilaration of hearing something like psychedelic music. I could
tell that I never ever heard about ten of those twelve frequency bands, indeed
it was like familiar music of the ‘60s to my ears. Now at this point at the completion of
calibrating each electrode, Dayna played them all
together, all twelve in a serial row, just like going one piano key at a
time. After Dayna completed this piano tune-up several
times, it was what I imagined how Mozart sounded, not quite 'Pomp and
Circumstance' yet, but we were definitely getting there.
About a half hour later when all the
singular electrode testing was completed, now we come down to the nitty-gritty,
the big banana, the speech processor is going to be turned on all by itself
without benefit of computer hook up. This is the phase where the hankies
are passed out. So I anxiously waited as
Dayna made sure the speech processor is fitted properly
around my ear.
For
those of you who have never seen a processor, (hereafter simply referred to as
the processor), it looks pretty much like a behind-the-ear hearing aid, but
somewhat bigger and more 'L' shaped than curved. The bottom
part of the 'L' is actually the processor, while the vertical longer part of
the 'L' is a battery pack large enough to hold three batteries, each having
about a half inch diameter. These two units are actually separate, but
are held connected by the curved ear hook that encircles the ear holding the
combined battery pack and processor in place. When the processor is
placed behind the ear, the ‘L’ is actually upside down so that the processor is
more parallel to the ground, while the battery pack is facing a downward
vertical position at least when you are standing or sitting. Emanating from the actual processor component
is a cord about three inches in length. On the other end of this
electronic cord is a round magnet, roughly about the size of a quarter.
This magnet is magnetically held in place by the, you guessed it, the
magnet that is permanently welded inside my scalp through the brilliance of Dr.
Daniel Lee’s surgical skills.
Assured that the processor indeed is
where it is supposed to be, Dayna then follows these reassuring
hand movements of a skilled professional doing her job by abandoning me.
I wait. I don't have a clue of what to expect, but suddenly I hear these
weirdest sounding sounds. The best analogy I can provide is the visual
and auditory image that came bouncing smack into my mind’s eye when I heard
these unheard of sounds. These sounds sounded similar to when, like a real
idiot, I threw Berky, an old Sig Ep fraternity
brother into the swimming pool at a popular off-campus housing complex located
in Amherst, Massachusetts, Puffton Village, before I
remembered to take my hearing aid off. Although Berky
was a fraternity brother of mine, I think he became my enemy forever, I haven't
heard a word from him since. I guess he was really ticked off because he
had his best penny loafers that matched his Maroon Keys suit, but he did laugh
uproariously when he realized I still had my hearing aid on. I say I
guess because I really couldn't hear him thanks to the dying hearing aid that sounded
something like a vacuum cleaner that was trying to operate in the swimming
pool, and I am talking about a real vacuum cleaner, not a swimming pool
cleaner. But I could Berky really was laughing like there was no tomorrow
because (remember, I had a little sight back then) his face was
beet red and his mouth was wide open even revealing his silver fillings.
I became concerned however when it looked like he was making these ghastly
contorted movements, sort of what I imagined a grand mal to look like. I
was told later that ol' Berky was laughing so hard that he swallowed some water
and began to choke, thus, his rage at me was back at square one.
Anyway, this was my
first association with these unnerving sounds fed from the processor into the
auditory cortex of my brain, but I got a hold of myself, again putting my id in
check for the second time in about a half hour. I took my leap into faith
and listened. And I listened. Still nothing was making too much
sense, in fact, nothing was making any sense. Somehow I reasoned to
myself, keeping the id in check still, that I had to put these sounds together,
after all, amy of these sounds were sounds I never heard before. It was
if, I thought, a giant auditory puzzle had been dumped out of the box on to the
table and I had to find a way to put this puzzle together, bit by bit. In
essence, my brains were becoming scrambled and I had to unscramble them by
making sense of these sounds.
All of a sudden,
what seemed like a minute after Dayna abandoned me (I
think it was about a minute although my sense of time had slipped a bit; I may
as well have been in orbit), I think I hear a recognizable sound. Now I
listen with even more patience, the patience of Job, just taking this sound
that is so agonizingly close to a word in. Is this sound I am hearing
what I think it is? I listen with all the concentration I can muster,
listening, listening . . .well, I’ll be, it is what I think it is. It is my
name, someone is saying “Brian”, and my name couldn't have sounded sweeter even
when my mother was preparing to nurse me as an infant.
After making sure
it is Brian that I hear, I start to ask if someone is calling me, except that
when I utter the first syllable I nearly jump out of my skin. I heard my
voice for the first time through the processor and, man, did it sound
different. The first thing I reflexively think of when I hear my name is
a activated tape recorder that is playing in high speed while submerged in
water, if such a thing could happen, except the letters that form my name can be understood. So I listen some
more. Now I am distinguishing some more words. “Brian, can you hear
me”. I hear this sentence repeated at least three times. It reminds
me of the line from the rock opera Tommy by The Who. “Tommy, can
you hear me, Tommy can you see me . . .” But this is no rock opera, I am
sitting in a professional's office, not at
Finally, I say, “yes,
I think I hear you . . .” but again jump to the sound of my own voice.
Then I say something to the effect (some of this I can't remember too well, as
my brains are really scrambling) “why does everything sound like a bunch of
chipmunks in heat?” then I hear a cacophony of sounds that resemble a canary
that got caught in a fan, but I decipher it to be laughter. So I laugh,
and again I jump. Now I make out some words that Dana, at least I think
it is Dana, is saying. “You are hearing all new sounds you never heard before.”
At least I got about a third of that sentence, but I assume that is what she
must have said. I feel like responding to this statement by uttering “no kidding
what a brilliant assessment” under my breath, but I think better of it because
I don't have the foggiest notion what uttering under my breath means
anymore. My own breathing sounds as loud as the wind blowing into my
helmet encased hearing aid while racing on a steep perilous course in the
downhill when I was a member of the US Disabled Ski team.
I learned
to calibrate the meaning of 'uttering under my breath' about forty years
ago when I uttered under my breath for my math teacher at Bridgton Academy (the
school I deliberately underscored my SATs for so I could have a hockey comeback
attempt) to, using my exact words, “go take a hike, you nerd”. Not only
did my math teacher hear it clear as a bell, so did the entire classroom.
Then my headmaster heard about it after the fact, and I nearly got bounced from
a school that I deliberately down scored my SATs to gain admittance, a school
at the time I was at the top of the class academically. Yep, I really
learned a real lesson, I would say I lowered my not so fancy
utterings about thirty decibels, but I still really had no way of knowing.
Then I make out “Brian, can you hear
me” again, and I wonder if this statement isn't getting a bit overdone. Somehow
however, I realized that I forgot that Sharron, Peter and Melissa are also in
the room. Without jumping this time, I ask who is speaking. I hear
the name “Sharron”. She says her name as if her nose is pinched together
by a clothespin and someone has magically tightened up her larynx
fourfold. I say “Sharron?” As my mind is so clouded, I try to think
of something intelligent to say to my soul-mate who is now in tears, so I say, “Have
we met before?” to which I hear the sound of the canary hitting the fan again. Some refer to this ill fated canary as
shredded tweet, but I don’t want to offend any bird lovers or attract the wrath
of the SPCA, I am only attempting to make an analogy, although I never heard a
canary meet its doom with a rotary fan.
Then I hear the
sentence “Brian, can you hear me?” this time I hear a little emphasis on the
word 'me', so I deduce, using my Irish logic, that it
is someone different once again. I ask who's speaking now ,
and when I hear the word “Pete” which I really can make out well despite it
being a monosyllabic word, I break out in near convulsive laughter. I couldn't
have jumped even if I wanted to because the hilarity hit me before the weird
sound had a chance to grab me. Besides,
I am starting to get used to this falsetto sounding world. “Pete”,
I reply, my voice still sounding like a Martian, “did you have a
sex-transplant?”. Again, the canary hit the
fan.
Now, I get serious,
something hard to do at this stage of the game, and really concentrate on my
listening skills. After all, I am a professional psychotherapist by
trade. I am hearing more words now,
still not putting the sentences together too well, thus asking for a lot of repetitions,
but I am definitely making out more words. Finally, I make out Dayna saying that I am hearing my own voice and that is
tripping me up a bit. Tripping me a bit? What a gross understatement. The first time I tried to say my very first
words via implant, actually the first I attempted to get the letter 's'
sound out, I looked around to see who else was in the room, except that I can't
see and I had forgotten that. Remember, my brains are still scrambled, no
acid, no drugs, but I swore I was going to have a quick cocktail when this was
over and I made good with this internal pledge.
The letter ’s’ perhaps along with the letter 'x' are perhaps the
highest frequencies in the alphabet and I never really could hear them before,
along with a bunch of other letters. The letter's' was really tripping
me, however, for one thing it is spoken more often, but more so because the
letter is spoken by lightly placing the tip of the tongue behind the upper front
teeth where the roof of the mouth begins. Every time I would place that bloody
tongue even close to the connecting point of the gum to make the letter 's', I
would hear a distinctive whistle, a canary that did not hit a fan.
Eventually, I am able to make the adjustment and utter out a few words,
constantly asking if my speech still sounds the same, each time hearing a
'yes', the 'yes' sounding as if intoned by a young toddler answering to her
Mommy.
I make out Dayna explaining to me that everything sounds so different
because I am hearing sounds that I have never heard before. You see, the
normal frequency span of human speech is approximately from 250 Hertz, or Hz to
about 6000 Hz, most of the sounds actually being between 500 Hz to about 4000
Hz. From birth, I could never heard sounds from about 2500 Hz, and I only
heard those sounds when spoken at about 80 decibels, or about four times the
volume of normal speech. From the time I was around thirty, I never heard
a sound that was over 1000 Hz, again only hearing anything at 750 Hz when
cranked up to about 85 decibels. What complicated matters even more
was that I had excellent speech for someone with such a profound loss, some of
my audiologists stating it was unprecedented; therefore, many thought I had
pretty good hearing despite the presence of the hearing aid (which gets covered
up when my hair gets longer), so when I am unable to responding conversation to
other people, especially in the nightmarish environment with background noise,
I am taken by strangers to be another Forest Gump. When the environment is perfectly quiet and the
speakers are in close proximity to me (a bodily arrangement I became quite
adept at encouraging, especially with females), I am often believed to be near
normal in my auditory connection to the world, but make no mistake about it, I
am just about totally deaf without my hearing aid, while hearing only about a
quarter of sounds in the lower frequencies (250 Hz to 750 Hz) with it.
But now I am
hearing all of the sounds in the human frequency band, but I am not hearing
them like you as a non-hearing impaired person, as you hear these sounds
through the gift of God, through your cochlea, a tiny organ that is lined with
hair like filaments that vary in length from perhaps about a half
millimeter to a two millimeters, while these sounds are coming into my brain
via twelve electrodes. But the magnificence of technology has enabled
these amazing electrodes to come quite close to resembling human speech.
It just sounds unlike human speech to me because I have never heard speech the
way it is supposed to be heard. Instead, I have incorporated those
misrepresented sounds into my own auditory world, literally turning these
sounds upside down to make them fit into my auditory orientation to the
outer world, and this has always been my hearing frame of reference.
Eventually, after deciphering more
words and sentences, mostly incomplete sentences, Dayna takes
off the processor and I plug back into the world my ordinary way with my
hearing aid. She explains to me that
things went very well, much better than she expected and promises me that the
quality and the comprehensiveness of the sounds are going to get better and
better and better. I appreciated the
reassurance, but I didn’t really need, I had a pretty good idea that this would
be the case. She bids me well for the
evening, tells me that even the next day I will notice an improvement and
assures me that I will sleep like a baby the this evening. She is absolutely correct on both counts and
I believe that her prediction of the sleeping baby has some metaphorical
meaning.
At this point I was pretty wiped
out, but I left the office with the processor on. Peter, the proverbial hard driving engineer
and anatomist, drilled me with questions, asking what I can hear. He also asked me, when we were finally and
very graciously seated for cocktails, if I could ear specific things like the
sound of ice tinkling against the crystal.
I assured him that I could, but neglected to tell him, due to pleasure-driven
motivation and selective hearing, that I always could hear that tinkling
ice.
Speaking of
tinkling, and this part is not to be read by the squeamish, as it could be
interpreted as rather primitive, but it’s The God’s truth and was very
meaningful to me, so I hope you hear me out.
The only other noteworthy event was that after my cocktail, I had to,
well . . ., I had to pull off a number one in the bathroom, or as we used to
say in the Hubbard household, I had to tinkle.
So I stumbled, from blindness aggravated by fatigue not the cocktail,
into the bathroom and proceeded to do my business. Then it hit me like a thunderbolt, the
awareness snapped me smack out of my cocktail fed weariness. I couldn’t believe it, I just could not
believe it, it was too far out. I could actually hear my own internal fluids
hitting the water in the toilet, hearing the sounds of my internal renal
cleared fluids tinkling the water like the tinkling of a hundred spoons tapping
against the crystal at a wedding. I
almost leaped for joy except I was still passing my water. I realized that no more would I have to worry
about wondering if I actually aimed right, or have to deal with the agonizing
frustration of feeling liquid hitting your shoes and socks, or even worse, your
pants. This was especially a pitiful
scenario when dressed in formal attire before something important such as
giving a talk somewhere or attending a funeral.
This even became more of a problem after prostate cancer, when the
atrophying of the ureter made it very difficult to control. When I got bombed with that unforgivable
problem and I didn’t have time to change, I would make up some dumb excuse such
as getting splashed by a passing car driving through a puddle even though it
hadn’t rained for three weeks and the streets were dry as a bone. Tears of laughter and joy welled up again, as
I realized this pathetic problem was indeed a thing of the blasted past.
Sharron and I
return the next day right on time at
Then we get right
down to business, going through the same procedure that we went through the
previous day. This time we wing right
through it, checking each electrode one at a time. This time I want the volume cranked up a bit,
even slightly bordering on mild discomfort.
Next she gives me a sort of a hearing test, to let her know when I first
notice the sounds that increase in frequency.
It is amazing to me that I can actually hear those high frequency
sounds, even with little decibel amplification, or at least, that’s what I
think the case was. Then she makes some
adjustments with the processor through her computer based on the test
results. She hands it back to me and I
place it on by myself. She begins
talking and immediately I notice a difference.
Although not all the time, I am getting complete sentences, and indeed
it really hits me that a miracle has occurred.
I listen to the strange world that is now less strange, becoming more
familiar with the heated chipmunks as Dayna once
again explains that things will get better and better. We do so well on this day, we don’t even have
to use the entire two hours allotted, so we engage in some dialogue. I share with Dayna that
once the implant has taken hold (notice that I didn’t say ‘if the implant takes
hold’), I really would like to fulfill my dream of
getting my PhD, specializing in geriatrics.
After all, I am going to have to take care of some of my friends pretty
soon as it will be payback time.
After arriving home, Sharron was drop
dead tired and headed for a nap, so I went to sit outside on the patio. I just sat and listened with my new ear. Even though intellectually prepared for this,
I still can’t believe the spectrum of sounds I am hearing, even the creaking of
the swing chair I was sitting on sounded so loud. I listened to everything, I took it all in,
drank it all up, occasionally attempted to distinguish
what I hear, the other times I just took it all in. Despite some of those corny hearing aid ads I
have heard, about being able to hear the birds, I still got a jolt of emotion
when I really did hear some birds, even two that seem to be talking to one
another. I was able to distinguish the
sound of cars passing in the front of the house, something I was not so sure I was
pleased about. But I couldn’t believe I was
hearing all of this, it just blew me away.
I think some of the mind blowing is attributed to the sublime fact that
I always conditioned myself to accept my limits, never allowing my hopes to
rise up, that something could actually be done to help me. I learned that lesson back as a college
sophomore when a pompous
Sitting in the
swinging patio chair, I held back tears, not so much because I was reticent
about such things, but I didn’t want to run out of them. Starting from the day I went under in
preparation for Dr. Lee’s knife, lamenting to the nurses that my tears were of
joy, not the anesthesia, to hearing my first sound, then to hearing my name to
hearing those corny birds, I figured I couldn’t keep letting the watershed overflow, the lachrymal
glands must have a limit to the manufacturing of tears. After all, I was granted my infancy back,
therefore I could now be very infantile.
Thus, I am going to anticipate much, much more, including my beloved
Snowshoe Siamese Minky’s cries, a sound I haven’t heard yet for the simple
reason she isn’t crying these days because she is so happy we are back.
The next day, September 4th,
there was definite improvement in comprehension and, by golly Miss Molly, some
of those sounds really kicked up quite a stir in me. Sharron did laundry, the machine being down
in the basement, and I couldn’t believe how loud it sounded. I had to ask Sharron what it was. Before today, I never heard one iota of that
machine. So, in a five page nutshell,
that’s how the Big Bang went. Still a
long way to go, but absolutely no doubt that I will get there, thanks, in a
huge part, from the great support I am getting from all of my friends and loved ones. They all, hometown pals as well as college
buddies, have supported me for over forty-five years, so my indebtedness to
them will never allow me to cease the reciprocity. The new gift of hearing, there is nothing like it in the world. The miracle of hearing, it just makes the
miracle of life that much more powerful.
Copyright by:
Brian J. Hubbard, LICSW
brian@brianjhubbard.com
www.brianjhubbard.com