§ ¶More power to the left engine!
Either all my practice with the CI is paying off, or my new map is a good one - or both. Every day now, I pick up at least one sentence or phrase by listening, and most of the time, I'm not even trying. Yesterday I was elsewhere in the house when I heard Aaron say to Doran, "Stop!" I heard Samara say to Aaron, "I want to see!" One morning, she even said something to my back, and I responded in kind and then turned around to look at Aaron to say, "Did you see that?!!" Whenever I rationalize it by saying I only heard these things because I know the person well and can predict what they'll say or figure it out based on context, I have to remind myself that hearing people do that too, and I AM hearing these things regardless!The only downside is that with a more powerful map, my slim cell batteries (the smaller ones that fit me better) aren't lasting as long. I was already getting in the habit of taking an extra battery with me, even when I was on my second battery, so that should help. I'll have to see how long my larger batteries will last with this map - before, I could get through the day without changing.
§ ¶The topic is: rehab
I started rehab again a couple of weeks ago. The student I'm now working with is Becca (Welcome to the blog!). I've had no problem adjusting to a new voice. Both sessions I came away feeling like I did well. We've been doing a new exercise that I like: Becca tells me a topic, and then says several sentences (one at a time) related to that topic. She gives me the main word in each sentence, and more often than not, I'm able to repeat most or all of the sentence. Sometimes I need another word, but being told the topic and main word really help focus my listening.Just now, I heard a noise that sounded like someone talking. I couldn't figure out what it was until I found Aaron in his office listening to the answering machine. While waiting to talk to him, I found myself paying attention to the voice. It sounded like the person was talking really slow, but then I realized she was listing a telephone number. I cought the last four digits, and asked Aaron if I got them right: 2314. He said it was 3314 - but that's pretty damn good for hearing a number without knowing it was coming, a stranger's voice, no less.
Yesterday I had a long mapping session. We created several programs and ended up having to discard most of them. We thought we had three, but when I was tested in the sound booth, I asked Sharon if there was background noise - I kept hearing something that was distracting me from the sounds I was supposed to be hearing. She said that the bass was overpowering the other sounds, which wasn't good. A couple other programs had frequencies that were hurting my ear. We ended up improving upon the program I walked in with, and the other two programs are increased to further degrees. I go back in early May for my year check-up, unless the Harmony (the new processor) comes in before then. Sharon said for nine months in, I'm doing really well.
