Pounding the Pavement, Catching Some Bass

Yesterday I brought my first audiobook, a set of Bible-thumping sermons, since I've decided to convert. If I'm going to get a platinum chip put in my head, I might as well accept the Lord Jesus as my savior. Through a process known as the Immaculate Implantation, Jesus was born again as a little platinum child in my head. There were no drills inserted into me. My head is still virginal and intact.

Anyway, I actually got THE ROAD, Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, which beat out our beloved Alice McDermott's AFTER THIS for the Pulitzer Prize last year.

THE ROAD envisions a post-apocalyptic world where I wouldn't have batteries for my implant and I'd have a tough time updating this blog. Actually, more like a world where I already would have been starved or cannibalized. It seems like a fitting companion to BLOOD MERIDIAN, McCarthy's brutal novel of the Wild West. Anyway, the narrator has a Gregory Hayesesque low voice, except when he does the child's voice, which makes him sound like a gay man doing a voice-over for Santa's reindeer in a Christmas special. Okay, it's not that bad. He's actually a grat orator, and it's a pleasure to read along as part of my aural rehabilitation with the implant.

Voices are starting to sound a lot better, and the audiobook helps a lot. The narrator has the lowest voice of any I've yet heard with the implant, and he actually sounds fairly normal. Now that I'm getting into the lower frequencies, I'm beginning to yearn for the lowest of the low. Lawd Jizus couldn't keep me for long. That's Lucifer stabbing a pitchfork in my brain, old Light-bringer tripping my wire. So the lowest of the low. Where's the bass? Why does the beat of every song I listen to sound like high hats exploding in my head? Why do cars passing sound more like wind whispering through the trees?

I started tinkering with the EQs on my computer, trying to figure out which frequencies were coming in and which weren't. Each frequency stimulates a different electrode in my cochlea, and it's my brain's job to connect the dots and figure out the corresponding sound. It's not quite that simple, as Ryan, my audi, will adjust the program on the processor and turn up the electrical signal going to each electrode as necessary. There may be dead zones in my ear, or more likely, areas that need a higher threshold of stimulation. Right now, the electrodes are at a low simmer, just getting things warmed up. I can't go the big leagues without some practice first.

So where's the bass? I've always heard the low ranges better. I was starting to get a bit frustrated. Raging thoughts went out randomly, and I felt the sudden urge to throttle a particularly unlikable ear doctor I had 20 years ago, who wanted to give me a cochlear implant back then, at a time when that basically involved taking parts from the busted-up radios of El Rancheros, using a chisel to make the incision, etc. Today I wanted to implant the doc with a squeaky toy, even though I haven't seen him in 20 years and he really has nothing to do with anything. Thankfully I've spent the last twenty years wearing a portable phonograph behind my ear, winding in new sheet music on the hour.

And then tonight, lo... the bass. Not quite the gut-rumbling stuff that pours out of souped-up Corvettes and Gospel churches, but a couple thousand khz lower than what I heard yesterday. What happened? Willpower? The silky smooth bass of the guy narrating THE ROAD? The threats and cajoling I've been giving to this pouty little platinum child in my head? It's not quite the chest-thumping bass I'm used to, but it's a big improvement.

This is kind of fun. I get to be a big baby all over again, growing up and learning new sounds. I'm getting a first-hand lesson at neural plasticity and relearning the world from a phenomenological standpoint. It's fascinating.

Exercise for my Bionic Ear

Yesterday my mom read to me. My dad was sitting at the desk in the corner of our living room, working on a poem. It was just like when I was a little kid. We started with Emily Dickinson and then moved onto Elizabeth Bishop. While I was reading along, all the words were clear in my head. My mom's voice even sounded almost natural. Particularly enjoyable were Bishop's Canadian poems.

Mom read me a story. I had no idea she was going to blind side me with James Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man," a harrowing and riveting story about a lynching in the south. Mom, whatever happened to the Velveteen Rabbit and Corduroy Bear?

Last night I plugged the iPod into my head, resisting the urge to put in my hearing aid. Careless mechanics hacked away at my brain. But once again a strange thing happened. Somewhere in my head, ever so faintly, I began to hear the song I was listening to. Was I actually hearing it, or was I simply remembering it?

When I was in junior high, my friend Cort and I obsessively listened to UB40's "Red Red Wine." It was one of my first two or three reggae tapes, along with a few Marley albums. I went through my wanting to be black phase when I was twelve or thirteen. I wanted big dreadlocks and a Jamaican accent, but I was just an Iowa kid with a few tie-dye shirts and reggae tapes.

Anyway, I tried out "Red Red Wine" on the iPod, figuring that the only song I'd ever listened to twenty or thirty times in a row must be rattling around up there somewhere. Damn, it was. It's hard to come up with an analogy, but it was the hearing equivalent of seeing a ghost. It was there and it wasn't there. It sent a shiver through my head.

What It Looks Like

This is what it looks like.



When it's on my head...



My hair normally coves the magnet part. I'm going to punch out the first person who asks me what kind of Bluetooth this is. Well, not really. It pretty much looks like a hearing aid.



This is what I look like in the morning when I put it on. It's not really visible from the front.



This is what I look like at the end of the day.

Other than the fact I now have a computer chip in my head, I feel normal and healthy again. I've got no good excuses to take more of those little white pills I so enjoyed a few weks ago. No longer dizzy, either. We've done some nice hikes in the Baltimore area this past week. I've been pleasantly surprised to find it's the greenest American city I've been to outside of the West Coast. There are some beautiful old growth deciduous areas.

What I Hear Now

I hear birds! I hear voices from afar! I hear sibilant sounds!

But it's not an immediate success story. What I know I'm hearing and what it actually sounds like are two different things.

I hear squeaky toys! I hear power drills! Sounds are nuanced in the way that, say, chainsaws and mitre saws are nuanced.

Actually, there are moments when it sounds like someone is stabbing me in the head repeatedly. My brain is saying OMG and WTF in Morse code. Voices are still intermittent bursts of static. I recognize the beat of my favorite songs but can't hear anything else. I tried out a Felix Da Housecat electro-house song, thinking it might be comparatively easy listening. It sounded like the Tin Man doing kegels. Pardon my French, but a robot is shitting in my head.

Strangely enough, my brain is already making sense of all this chaos. I recognize my mom and dad's voices, though after two days, they are both still getting the Darth Vader effect. Even stranger, their voices seem almost normal when I'm lip-reading them. I hear the 'ssssssss' sound, which I can't remember ever hearing. Sparrows are shrieking in the bush by my front porch. A baby robin across the street has set off a fire alarm. A few things sound normal. The tapping of my computer keyboard, or flipping the pages of a book.

The loudest sound in the world is a paper bag being crinkled. Toilets flushing and helicopters are a close second. My guitar sounds interesting. Playing what should be simple, relaxing arpeggios, it sounds like Devo.

What It's Like to Wake Up

This is a great artistic representation of what it feels like to put the cochlear implant on in the morning. And yes, things really do sound like that right now. My hope is that in three or six months down the road, I'll be having those rose petals falling on me, too.

I woke up, looked at my sexy little Harmony. As soon as I put it on, I feel like I'm getting electroshock therapy. Blasts of static shoot up into my head. I'm getting bludgeoned with some sound and I can't figure out what it is. It could be a car going by outside, or the Advil rattling on the table by the bed. Maybe someone farted downstairs. Anyway, it sounds like someone just hit me on the side of the head with a baseball bat.

Getting Turned On

It's been two full days since I went in and got the external processor for my cochlear implant. It's called the Harmony and it's packaged in a box with all these nature pictures. There's a hummingbird on the front and a waterfall on the inside of the box. I think the pictures are meant to suggest that I will live happily ever after, in harmony with nature and the cosmos, and that as soon as my head was plugged into the computer I would achieve samadhi on the spot.

Actually, I was just hoping that the thing worked. Ryan, my audiologist, warned me not to expect too much. The processor was hooked onto my ear and the headpiece was attached to the side of my head via a small magnet. It seemed as innocuous as a barrette or hair clip.

"Do you hear anything?" he asked.
"No."
"Now do you hear anything?"
"No."

After a few minutes of this, I began to notice that the ringing in my left ear was getting worse. There was a clicking sound. My implant was speaking to me. I had voices in my head. They were speaking in Swahili, but they were voices. Why was my implant talking to my left ear when it was on the right side of my head?

After 27 years of hearing only in my left ear, my brain wasn't ready to accept that sound could come from the other side.

Each of the 16 electrodes in my cochlea were turned up to what I perceived to be a comfortable level. There was some variation in pitch but not much. Mostly it just sounded like clicks. When the processor was turned on, voices sounded like static. A lot of people say voices sound like Minnie Mouse on helium or Darth Vader, but everything I heard those first few hours was just static. It sounded like a radio station with bad reception. There was a vocal cadence to the static.

That night when I was at the bar, someone set off a ping pong ball lottery machine in my head. Rabid gerbils were spinning in their wheels. I turned my hearing aid on for a moment. A country western song was playing on the jukebox. I liked the gerbils better.

I'd be lying if I said this thing sounds good. It'll probably take months for things to start sounding normal. All the same, I feel like a guy with a $50,000 stereo installed in my head. I just pimped out my ride.

Thanks for your support

Thanks to everyone who has been giving me so much support since this past weekend... it's great hearing from all of you. Whether it's text messages, emails or letters, I've appreciated it all. It makes a huge difference.

Two days after

I'm still dizzy but perked up on Percocet. Here are some lovely pictures of my new right ear. For those of you who don't know, I ended up implanting the right ear, not the left, after an eleventh hour email from my surgeon. Long story that I don't have the energy to tell right now, but I will update more later on that.



I look pretty normal from the front, just a little bit of swelling on the right side of my face. Plus I'm exhausted.



A nice side shot of my gorgeous new haircut. That's marker on my neck, not bruising... the surgeon draws an arrow pointing to my ear so he doesn't do the wrong one by mistake. And that gleaming patch on my scalp is not my new metallic interior, but just a bit of ointment gleaming in the sun.



The incision itself. Already healing nicely.

Before and after

BEFORE



I used to be sad all the time...


AFTER



...but then a dump truck changed my life!


Yep. That's me, before and after surgery. In fact, that's me less than a half hour after the nurse woke me up from anesthesia. It felt like there was a piece of molten slag hanging from the side of my head.