1.13.2008

adventures in grocery shopping

sounds more fun then it was I'm sure, but I am also getting quite a lot of the what else did you hear today emails too, so here ya go: yesterday i went to fred meyers (by my self) and i would be in some isle then i would hear a man's voice talking all the sudden. now i can recognize its a person talking noise, but not identify the words yet. so, i would turn around and look and find i was the only person in the isle, and i though wow you must be picking up people from an isle over or something. finally found everything on the list and got lucky enough to find my favorite teller was working, so i told her you know, when your deaf a lot of people seem to sneak up on you know? so, I'm sure there are lots of times when I've been asked to move my cart out of the way by people wanting to go past me in the store where i just you know people talking to the back of a deaf person do not get acknowledged so, i was really excited to think i may hear something like that. and i asked her if the store had a you know something like a "attention Kmart shoppers the blue light special is in isle 49 or something" ( my grandma worked at k-mart for many many years before she retired, and this is just one of those off the wall things i remember about that) :) anyways she said, no that the store didn't do things like that, then she thought about it some more and she said there is an intercom inside there, but it says thing like clean up on isle 10 customer service to the loading dock and things like that. so, anyways. the thing I'm noticing this weekend is its easier to pick out individual noises and try to identify them when its quiet and I'm alone. my family is noisy. haha. and they always always have noisy things ON. the TV is ON if one of them is home. Tim says by the way the reason the blinker on the turn signal sounds twice as fast as the blink is you hear a noise for the green color to appear and you also hear a noise when it goes away... to me it is the same click tick type sound though, i can not tell which noise is for which motion. also, if I'm stopped say in a center divider and i can hear it ticking, if another car passes me from the oncoming traffic while i wait, as that car goes by all i hear is the swish sound of that, it drowns out the ticking noise. if I'm moving and going to make a turn without stopping. i don't hear the ticking noise at all, the tires on the pavement drown it out. people keep asking how i am dealing with the noise here and there and different things. but, this is what i have is not a hearing aid, it does not produce any noise, its a sound processor that transfers what i am allowing it to hear to my brain. the level of noise i hear was set by a computer in the audiologists office. so, i have a low program ( lets in very little noise) a medium, lets in a little more, then a loudest version. then i have a volume control so in each program i can make it louder or quieter. I find i am running on the medium settings or the loud settings most of all. so probably when we go back i will be getting More. i have all the sounds that anyone else hears but, for me they are a jumble of noise. i can pick out people really well from the background noise. and music is not coming through yet, a couple of times i thought i could hear a rhythm but, not actual music the way you think of it. So that's about it for this morning. more later, gotta make some time to play been way too busy cleaning this weekend. :)

4 comments:

LindainNCtoo said...

What a journey you have been on, Stacy.

I cannot imagine what your brain is going through each time it hears a noise now. Besides hearing a noise....trying to figure out what it is and where it is coming from, in additional to paying attention to what is going on around you-----definitely a sensory overload.

I wonder what "noises" you will hear {next} time.

I hope you are keeping a journal all about your surgery, Stacy.

Andi (RrlScrapGal) said...

So darn cool!!!!!!!

Thanks for sharing all of this with us....

Becky said...

WOW! Not only is your work amazing, but you are truly an inspiration! Your recent posts about your surgery and your healing is amazing. I wanted to ask...have you posted before about how you lost your hearing? How did you get to right where you are now? Im thinkin you need to write a book, cause this is so fascinating!!! And you could be the designer of your own cover...cause you are DEFINITELY capable of that!!!

Penny said...

Hi Stacy, crikey, I have missed a lot of posts , love your cards, especially the pink embossed background.

And so good to know you are hearing more now. It sounds like a whole new world is opening up for you!