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Phone Antics… September 7, 2008

Posted by loz121 in Uncategorized.
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Since the topic of the moment for CI’s is using the phone, I have never used the phone much even with my Cochlear implant because I tend to text people more. If you get a good clear phone which you can change the volume, then you are more likely to hear what people are saying on the line. It took me a while to come to use the telephone at home when I got my CI because I wasn’t used to using it and talking to people on it. Although now I can pick up the phone whenever, and call whoever I want, I can still miss what people are saying on the phone even if it’s clear and I have to tell them to repeat what they say. If it’s a new person who doesn’t know I’m deaf, I just tell them that I’m deaf and I can have problems hearing on the phone sometimes and they understand if i have to ask them to repeat what they have said.
When I’m on the phone, I am often told to speak more loudly because I have a quiet voice, although when I’m off the phone I’m always loud! I also sometimes use the speaker phone on my mobile or the land line just because it’s easier! I speak to my nana a lot more now when she calls because she lives in Middlesbrough and I don’t get to see her a lot of the time. I wish she lived closer though because she’s so funny at times and I love her!
Another reason I don’t use the phone to talk is because most of my friends are on MSN and I talk to them more on that than the phone. If they aren’t on MSN, we are always texting!

The cold creeps in… September 6, 2008

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Last night and today, I felt the first prang of coldness since September started and it took me ages to warm up once I got to bed! What with summer over now, I now have to prepare to wear more layers of clothes for the autumn and winter. I may have put a stone to my weight, but because I have a low weight than the average person of my age, I tend to get cold at the slightest draught coming in the house or if I touch something cold and it takes me some time to warm up! I tend to wear a lot of layers when I’m cold and then when I finally warm up, I have to take it all off coz I all hot again!! So when I’ve taken it off, I get cold again and need to put my jacket on again! Winter is the worst season for me because I can’t stand to go outside because it’s so cold and my feet seize up and go all freezing when I’m waiting for a bus for 5 minutes! My feet & hands are always the coldest because of circulation so they take longer to warm up! People mostly comment on it and I wonder who will ever want to hold my hand because it’s freezing??
My chair that I sit in at home to use my laptop, it’s by the window so when it’s sunny its nice and warm but when it’s cold its always cold and draughty even when the curtains are shut! It took me a year or so to gain my weight and it has improved my overall look but I only got very warm in summer but still finding it hard to warm up in the colder seasons! I have my wheat bag teddy (its shop name is beddybear but i call it benny bear!) which I can microwave and warm up and hes so toasty and cuddly! He’s a life saver when I’m cold!

Moving on… September 4, 2008

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I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself lately so I’m going to do my best to try and pick myself up again and get back to the confident girl I used to be! I know my friends have their own lives, careers and friends going on so I’m always trying my best to make more new friends. I spend most of my time being at home watching TV or being on the internet talking to friends, so I think I may just start doing another latch hook rug to keep me busy! I’ve been staring at the same 4 walls at home now for some time and its becoming my safe area where nothing will hurt me but that’s where it’s going downhill because its giving me time to think too much and make myself worse! I need to find a way to get out of the house and my predicament before I go even more bonkers! I may write to my old junior school and see if they want any help with the kids which is a good start because its familiar territory . I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting at home while everyone I talk to is out there doing something worthwhile with their lives! I may have gone through a lot but my family always tell me there’s always someone worse off than me and just as well because I feel very stupid and guilty at that point! I hope to look forward to the future from now on and try not to think too much about what might happen.
I’ve always felt like if I lost my cochlear implant, my world might end because I’m so used to it now and I wonder what might happen if It ever did lose the one I have now but I don’t ever want to think about that! I don’t know if there ever might be a possibility of having another cochlear implant depending on what happens, for example, I lost my last cochlear implant because I caught an ear infection which led to lots of exploratory operations over the years and it’s left the inside of my ear a bit screwed up plus a bit of scar tissue behind the outside of my ear. Although, the ear infection that led to me losing that cochlear implant was a freak accident and it should never happen again. My mum is always telling me she thinks my cochlear implant was dislodged when I ran into the exit door really hard at Sainsbury’s when we were shopping, and me being stupid, I ran into the door at full speed thinking that the automatic door was going to open but it turned out to be the exit door and you had to walk through it the other side for it to open, I don’t know if that might have caused it or not but at the time when I found out it had to be taken out after an exploratory operation, I was so devastated. I moved on because of the possibility of another cochlear implant in my other ear so because of that, I occasionally wonder what would ever happen if I lost the one I have at the moment too. I know my condition (Multiple mitochondrial DNA deletions) was a factor that I couldn’t fight off my ear infection but because I didn’t find out the condition till I was 19, i can’t help that wonder if my CI surgeon knew that I had the condition when he found out about the ear infection, it would have saved me all the trauma of the exploratory operations. I don’t have any regrets about the choices I made to have those exploratory operations because at the time, I didn’t know I had my condition and I thought my ear infection would eventually clear up. All that said, I hope I will be able to move on from everything that’s happened and concentrate on living life to the full!

14 years of sounds with a cochlear implant… September 2, 2008

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Even after having my cochlear implant for 14 years now, I still find myself saying “what”? or “what’s the noise?” to a sound I’m unfamiliar with or have heard it before but it sounds different. I sometimes have to say “what?” or “sorry what was that? Sometimes it’s because I’m not concentrating on what people are saying or I just simply miss what someone says. I can sometimes hate it when I can overhear what people say though, like if I’m in the kitchen and they don’t think I can hear but I do…
I love finding out new sounds though, and wondering what they are…
For example, I sit by the window most of the time with my laptop, suddenly there would be a quiet tapping sound against the window. I’m confused because there’s no one at the window and then it dawns on me it’s just the rain!!
Once, I stayed up late one night, as we young ones do!! In my room this summer, I heard a strange sound I’d not heard before, it sounded like a quiet “woooo woooo” I went to bed wondering what it was and the next morning, I woke up and asked my mum what the sound was. She told me it was an owl and it has just moved in the area and it does that noise occasionally. I often spend the night with my window open in summer, in my room, my TV on silent with subtitles to not wake my parents up! This prompts me to hear all these new sounds during the night like crickets chirping, they rain pattering down and thunderstorms!
I love sitting in the garden in the summer reading a book, and as we have a woods behind our back garden there’s always lots of birds singing and even with the faint traffic noise from our road, I just find the world very peaceful and relaxing!

Possible Deaf Networking… September 1, 2008

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Last night, I wrote a letter to the YCIS asking if it was possible to make a new pen-pal who has a cochlear implant in the Yorkshire area (UK). Tonight, I got an email from my CI surgeon to write an article in the “Hearsay” newsletter which the YCIS write. Although it’s worth a try, I thought it would be better to create a little webpage or a social network where people can go on and write a bit about themselves, therefore email someone else who has a CI in Yorkshire and maybe make a friend for life! . I put this idea to him and he told me to go for it! Now I just have to shoot out some ideas for name for this website! The whole idea is to make new friends with cochlear implants in the Yorkshire area, and since I’m only 23, I would find it ideal for more people in their 20’s to come forward but Yorkshire people of any age would be welcome! I’m not totally sure how I will produce this site yet, and I’m going to shoot some ideas around first! I’m going to speak to some current CI friends I know to see what they want from it and see if they would use it so I know if it’s worth making first!! I find it would be interesting to meet both male and females in Yorkshire with CI’s and get to know them via the site. I’ve always liked to write to new people whether they are deaf or not and find out all the things about them! I have problems meeting new people, deaf or otherwise, I also always hear how some CI users have trouble communicating in group situations as I do. The internet is a brilliant way to communicate with deaf or hearing people with the likes of MSN or Yahoo messenger. So that concludes my idea for now and I hope I can achieve it, I will certainly have a go as it will give me something to focus on! E-mail is always good because some people can be busy and an email is always there waiting for you when you log on!
If anyone who reads this thinks it’s a good idea and has any ideas towards this, please let me know as I could do with all the help I can get if I decide to make it! I will probably be up all night thinking of names now…. At best, I’ve got E-Ci…. Any good? Who knows, it may become a meet/greet place for people with CI’s!!