Conquering the work phone

OK, I’ve been really lucky in being able to use the telephone again, I know, but part of my success is from being in a position where I can pick which phone I use.

The landline at home is great. It has a volume switch that can be boosted up quite a bit, and also has a telecoil.

The cordless at home is not so good. No telecoil, and voices sound really muffled. (Cordless phones in general are tricky, I think. If the person on the other end is using a cordless, their voices sound really distant.)

The mobile phone is brilliant. It’s an iPhone – doesn’t have a telecoil but is so unbelievably clear. I even prefer it over the landline.

That leaves one other phone in my life …

The work phone.

When I returned to work last month, after six weeks off, one of the first things I did was try out the work phone.

I heard the dial tone, good start. Then I called my mobile phone, thinking none of my family members or friends would take too kindly to being woken up at 8 am.

I yawned as I listened to it ring. Took another sip of my coffee. Rubbed my eyes.

Then I heard the strangest of voices.

‘Hi! You’ve called Daniela! I can’t take your call right now! But please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you!’

My jaw dropped as I came to terms with what I was hearing. Had that person been me? It had been recorded at a time in my life when I had normal hearing. And probably not a care in the world. It sounded so unafraid. So very unlike the way I speak on a telephone now, with my words silently punctuated by fear or anxiousness instead of by exclamation marks. It was a voice that sounded so much brighter and higher-pitched than the way my own voice currently sounded to myself through CIs. Which sound should I trust? If I hadn’t said my own name in the recording, I wouldn’t have believed it was me. And not just because the voice was a bit different, mind you. Because it was unfathomable that I could ever hear my own voice sound that chirpy at 8 am on a Monday morning. After a six-week break from work. Ever. 

I realised I was still holding the phone, slightly dumbfounded. I coughed, then I mumbled a message to my much perkier-self (‘you sound ridiculous’) and hung up the phone, reaching for my coffee.

But I also smiled. Because I’d heard a voice through the work phone. (I’d done a bit of research on this phone after I was fitted with a hearing aid, and discovered that it was not telecoil-compatible. So it always concerned me a bit.)

I’m sort of lucky in that my job doesn’t require a lot of telephone use. But that is also unlucky, in a way, because it means I don’t get to practice with it very often. And that means I don’t build up any confidence with it, unlike my mobile or home phone.

On Friday, my work phone rang for the first time since I’ve been back at work.

Whatever confidence I felt with the work phone on that first day had well and truly evaporated because when I heard it ring on Friday, I felt …

PANIC.

I looked at it nervously. The way it was ringing (longer, single tones) suggested it was an internal call. The display also showed me the name of the caller, confirming it was an internal call. Did that make it better? Or worse? It wasn’t a colleague I normally work with. Possibly not even a colleague who knew about my hearing history at all.  

I decided to answer it, scrambling around in my desk drawer for the Nucleus 5 remote control, in case I needed to adjust the volume during the call. I held the phone up to the left coil.

‘Hello ...?’

Oh my goodness, had it been that long since I’d picked up a work phone?  Clearly. Because even though it was an internal call, I’d normally answer more professionally than that.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I realised I could understand the voice on the other end. I moved the phone earpiece around the coil as quickly as I could, until I found the clearest spot. There was a lot of office background noise coming through my other CI on the right though, which was making it tricky. I lifted the right magnet off, and that seemed to help.

Suddenly, the voice on the other end became louder and clearer again.

I looked at the Nucleus 5 remote, on which my audiologist recently enabled the auto-telecoil, and, sure enough … it had picked up a telecoil.

Well there you go. I obviously didn’t research that too well, because the work phone has a telecoil after all. And given I was convinced otherwise, I never would have discovered it if the N5 remote hadn’t automatically picked it up!

After that, I found I could even attach the right coil back to the magnet on the right side of my head – the office noise coming through on that side didn’t seem to matter after the telecoil was activated. Phew!

All of this had happened in a matter of seconds, and all while I was also busy listening to my work colleague and answering his questions, while playing around with the sound settings.

After a five minute phone call, in which we were able to solve a problem pretty quickly and even make a few jokes, I hung up the phone and realised I was shaking.

But even though it took about five minutes for the shaking to stop, I was elated!