Don't care for Cher

Cher. In high definition. Prancing about in fishnet stockings on a 3 x 2 metre television screen. Stereo sound.

            Babies crying. Kids shrieking. (Did that have anything to do with Cher? Quite possibly.)

            Phones ringing. Names being called out.

            This is the scene I was met with at the doctor’s waiting room on Monday.

            I had been determined to go on my own, given the whole independence phase I was rediscovering. But I’d also been a bit nervous about it because the last time I went to this particular clinic, I’d sat there for an hour more than I needed to because I hadn’t heard the receptionist/s calling out my name. I had told them I was deaf. I had pointed out where I would be sitting. And I had explained that I’d be very grateful if someone would come and tap me on the shoulder when it was my turn. Or, even just stand up from the desk to get my attention before they called my name. But I guess they forgot. (My usual doctor is great, and she will always come out and get me herself. But I’d had to see someone else that day, so the “system” had failed. It’s a really busy clinic – there are about five different receptionists at the desk. But still.)

            On Monday, I didn’t bother giving them the spiel. Even if I went down the ‘hard of hearing’ path, and explained my CIs, they were likely to forget or ignore what I told them anyway. So I wedged myself into one of the last seats in the waiting room and decided to hope for the best. I could hear (chipmunk) Cher through my left CI and the noise from the adjacent pharmacy through my right CI, along with the sounds all the people around me were making.

            It was so loud. I suddenly felt very hearing impaired again, and very vulnerable. I suppose I should have been prepared for it – it hadn’t even been a week since activation, at the time – but I’d gotten used to hearing so well in ‘controlled’ environments, that I wasn’t ready for an uncontrolled one. Especially not one playing Cher at full volume.

            I began madly playing around with the remote, but even though my sound processor microphones are positioned to pick up sounds in front of me (I love this option on the N5 remote, by the way!), and the receptionist’s desk was in front of me, I still wasn’t sure I’d hear my name. (The ‘Focus’ program may have helped here, but I hadn’t received it yet.)

            Cher’s music sounded terrible (some hearing folk might agree with that statement regardless) and it made me realise how important it is to try and control the environment that you listen to music in. Especially in the early stages of activation. It mainly sounded like Noise! But other than a ‘Shoop shoop’ song, that I’m desperately trying to forget, Cher was mainly before my time. And though some of her songs are more recognisable than others, this looked like a recent concert so I doubted Sonny was going to appear on stage any time soon. So I was unlikely to recognise her songs. And I did not want to hear Cher anyway. I wanted to hear names. So I tried to block her out. And, quite frankly, I hoped the many children in the waiting room were also trying to do the same. (You’ve got to wonder why they were playing Cher for this audience. It was after school. Surely some Spongebob would have been more appropriate? And cartoon voices would have welcomed by me too ... now those I can comprehend!)

            I suddenly heard some nearby voices through the right CI and realised I could overhear the somewhat personal conversation a patient was having with the pharmacist, in the adjoining room on the right. (Woah! Too much information! Quick, turn down the sensitivity on that side!)

            Since I couldn’t understand the names being called out by the receptionists, I resorted to old techniques. Did the number of syllables match my name? Were any of the vowel sounds a match? A couple of times I stood up, but they’d meant someone else. My heart started to beat faster. The sounds started to merge in my head until it sounded like every voice I heard was saying my name, over and over again. I was getting a headache.

            But then I heard it for real.

            I think! Was that it? Best wait, to be sure.

            They said it again.

            Yes!

            I stood up.

            ‘Room 5,’ said one of the receptionists casually, with a flick of the hand before he went back to whatever he was doing. (Oh-so-casual like nothing interesting had just happened. But I’d just had a CI breakthrough! Didn’t he realise??!)

            My regular doctor was so surprised when she saw me walk in.

            ‘I didn’t have to come out and get you!’ she exclaimed, in her thick German accent that, for the first time ever, I understood every word of. (!)

            ‘I heard them call me!’ I said, astonished.

And I decided from that point forward that I wasn’t going to dwell on the hard time I’d had in the waiting room. There were other breakthroughs that had come from that visit!

           

So, as I so clearly heard Hugh Laurie say in that episode of House the other night, I'm going to try and remember that I need to take:

Baby steps!