In search of the lost chords
Folks who have read my memoir, Life After Deaf, know that my long quest to regain functional hearing has been one of compromise and acceptance. Even after a “successful” cochlear-implant do-over to fix one that went awry, I still don’t hear clearly enough on the telephone to have a conversation, can’t watch TV without captions, can’t recognize songs on the radio that I’ve heard hundreds of times.
Don’t cue the sad violins. They’d sound like mewling tomcats to me. Besides, I’m not sending out invites to a pity party. I get along OK. I can understand what people say if they’re close and the room is fairly quiet. I can hear birds and frogs and cicadas and the crunch of gravel under my feet. No, don’t cry for me, concertina.
Still, though, I hope. I wonder sometimes if a sudden change in barometric pressure may make my deadbeat ears perk up or if cochlear research will produce a breakthrough.
Which is why my wife and I will be driving to Nashville soon for an appointment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s cochlear clinic. In addition to standard implant “mapping” – programming the tiny electrodes that have been threaded into your cochlea, a process somewhat like a rock band doing a sound check – Vanderbilt has developed a system in which the audiologist uses a CT scan to guide the programming of the electrodes according to their proximity to auditory neurons.
A friend and fellow CI (cochlear implantee), Georgia State University professor Matt Hayat, urged me to seek out Vanderbilt’s doctors. He reported a game-changing uptick in his bionic hearing after undergoing the CT-guided mapping procedure.
In anticipation of improvement that could restore more of my ability to appreciate music, I’ve compiled a little list of recordings I will listen to, a few of them old favorites, a few that will be new to my ears:
“I Hear You Knocking” – Fats Domino
“I Heard It Through the Grapevine” – Marvin Gaye
“Ring the Living Bell” -- Melanie
“I Hear a Symphony” – The Supremes
“Death Sound Blues” — Country Joe & the Fish
“Bang a Gong” – T. Rex
“In a Silent Way” – Miles Davis
“The World in a Sea Shell” – Strawberry Alarm Clock
“The Three Bells” – The Browns
“Boom Boom” — The Animals
“Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya” — Ella Fitzgerald
“I Can Hear Music” – Beach Boys
Wish me luck.