Deafness can lead to weight gain!

I attended a PD workshop for work today. Around 10am we had morning tea so I dashed off to the toilets and went to the table with the coffee and got myself a drink. I then spied a jar of biscuits and thinking that morning tea was a bit light on, starting shoving cheap biscuits in my mouth (please don't mention this to my personal trainer). Anyway, I'm on my fourth biscuit, wondering where everyone was and one of the organisers comes towards me and asks me if I'd like to make my way to the conference room where morning tea is being served. "Fank you", I splutter through biscuit crumbs trying not to show on my face how stupid I felt. Well, I go to the conference room, where all the other participants are, obviously having heard the morning tea instructions, and spy platters of muffins, fruit and cake. Damn, I'm full of cheap biscuits. To hide the fact I force down the banana bread slice vowing that I wouldn't eat much lunch.
Lunch time comes around and I'm on the ball. I make a sprint for the conference room feeling smug that I have first dibs on the spread. I see platters of yummy little sandwiches and inspect a few to see if they are vegetarian. Happy munching away with a mouth full of salad and bread, the organiser lady comes up to me and says "are you the vegetarian, we have your lunch here" as she hands me a plate of sandwiches that I can no longer fit in my bulging stomach. Sigh. I force down my special order and roll back to the workshop.
Afternoon tea comes around quickly. Down in the conference room they have plates of gourmet biscuits with chocolate and fresh fruit. Oh, what the hell, a few more biscuits won't hurt.

What was the workshop about? No idea, couldn't hear it, but the food was good.

A cunning plan.....

So I'm wanting to order a piece of furniture over the phone from Freedom Furniture but Steve is busy studying so my plead for him to make the call for me falls on deaf ears. Time for an alternative strategy. I get my iphone out and put it on speaker phone, nice and loud. Then I stand really close to Steve. When the person at Freedom answers I look at Steve and whisper "huh?". He says "say hi" and away we go. I'm standing so close to Steve he doesn't have a hope of concentrating on his study anyway so he tells me what to say, I lipread him and answer and then watch him for my next reply.
Anyway, furniture ordered successfully, a team effort I say!

Brain Freeze

I think my brain is confused because I hear during the day and then I'm deaf at night when I remove the CI to sleep. I keep having regular dreams that I can hear at night. I'll dream that I can hear the kids calling out to me at night and I wake up ( in real life), realise that's impossible and go back to sleep again. This dream happens every few nights. I think maybe I'm scared that if the kids do call out to me I won't hear them. I also dream that Steve talks to me at night and I respond, just like I would during the day. This also wakes me up to check if Steve did in fact talk to me and by some sort of miracle my hearing has returned. So far, each time this has happened Steve is fast asleep, snoring silently.

Fitness for the Deaf

Another challenge today, personal fitness training, in a gym, a noisy gym. My work runs a personal fitness program every semester so for six weeks I can get flogged by a trainer in the gym.
While everyone else throws on their gym gear and hits the treadmill, I go through a deaf preparation routine.

Headband to put CI in? Check.
Spare battery in case I got flat? Check.
FM charged? Check.

So I head into the gym and the first thing I hear is the loud music. I don't know what the song is or the type of music, but I know it's music and I know it's loud. So I put the FM on and attach the microphone to my trainer and suddenly all I can hear is her. The FM cancels out the music and I just hear my trainer, clear as day, telling me to do four more push-ups. Hmmmm, maybe it's better that I don't hear her after all!

I woke up this morning

I woke up this morning deaf. Yes, I've woken up deaf every morning since August 11th 2011, but it still makes me stop for five minutes and think about what my life would have been like if I hadn't have got the cochlear implant straight away.
For starters, I woud be better at lipreading and signing. The cochlear implant makes me a bit lazy so I don't lipread or sign as much as I would. I prefer to look people in the eye anyway. I can participate in a normal conversation with one or more people just like a hearing person can.

My job wouldn't be as exciting. I'm working on a big project at the moment, the most important of my career, and this involves daily meetings, something that is very difficult to participate in (let alone Chair) when deaf. Next semester, post-project, I'm back in the classroom and will be implementing a whole host of new teaching strategies to make my teaching fun.

I wouldn't be as social, that's for sure. The cochlear implant doesn't pick up music at parties unless it's really loud so I find it's easy to chat away to friends. I NEVER say no to a social event based on my lack of hearing.

Without the cochlear implant I wouldn't be able to participate in family life the way I do. I'm in the office right now typing this but I can chat with my husband in the kitchen and I can hear my youngest son watching TV in the lounge. Speaking of TV, with my cochlear I can watch TV without subtitles!

OK, there are still things I find difficult with the cochlear but they are things that I can't do at all without it. Like my mum said, with a cochlear I'm ENABLED, not disabled, yay!  :)

The Conference Adventure

My day started yesterday at 8.00am. I was standing on the train platform writing emails on my phone, waiting for the train, and noticed a man standing in front of me. I suspected he was talking to me so I looked up. Sure enough, he was asking directions so I just told him which train was which and he seemed satisfied with that.

The train ride was fine, I couldn't hear the stations announced but I knew where I was so no problems. I then had a 20 walk up the street to find the hotel where my conference was being held. When I arrived my gorgeous work girls had saved me a seat right up the front.
I looked around; about 350 people sitting in a large ball room type space. Hmmmmmm. Looked up the front, microphones, that means I am not going to hear this $300 per head conference. Time to take deaf action.

I grabbed my trusty FM and headed out to the registration area and asked who was in charge. I was taken to see a busy woman and explained to her that I was deaf, using a cochlear implant and I needed to leave my FM as close to the speaker as possible. So she put it on the lectern and told the first speaker that it was there. No probs!

My FM sat perched on the lectuern for the first two speakers and I got terrible interference, like a badly tuned radio. Towards the end of the second speaker I went to the toilet and one of the ladies sitting at the desk outside asked me how it was going with my hearing. I told her about the interference and thought it would be better to have the speaker wear the FM so she jumped up and said "let's talk to the next speaker and ask her to wear it". So we did, and she did, and it was perfect. I could hear everything as if she was sitting in front of me in a quiet room. This speaker then asked the next speaker to wear it and so on.

At the end of the conference there was a question and answer session with a panel of six experts. With 350 people in the room there was no way I could hear the questions being asked. The leader of the panel, a young guy, saw me sitting there with a blank look on my face so he grabbed my FM and repeated every question into it, using it like a microphone, priceless. He then passed the FM to the panel and instructed them to speak into the FM and then he would collect it and either repeat the next question or sometimes he would run out into the audience and ask them to speak into the FM. One of the girls sitting next to me wrote me a note "You are special!".

Of the 350 people who turned up to attend the conference I ended up feeling like I was the only one there. They all made the effort to make me feel included without making a big deal about it. I was so delighted I went up afterward and thanked the young guy for his actions. He replied with a big smile "no problems"!

That's another one ticked off the deaf to do list.

Next Challenge

Tomorrow I'm heading into the city on the train to attend a conference. I will take the FM with me and hopefully I'll be able to hear the speakers and presenters. I suspect this challenge will be a little tricky but I will remain optimistic and if all else fails, I'll fall I'll and go home! I will report.