4 weeks after 'switch-on' Party time!

It's been a busy week! At the weekend I attended my first proper social 'outing' since the switch-on. It was a close friend's birthday party. It was full of lots of familiar and a few unfamiliar voices. I managed to keep the implant on the whole time although it was incredibly noisy. Lots of people asked me how I found it or how well I could hear. It's a bit of a tricky question because I've always been rubbish at hearing in noise..... and I'm still rubbish at hearing in noise! But that's not really what people want to hear and I think there is a bit of pressure a few weeks after the implant to be really positive and say it's amazing/life changing etc and whilst it is pretty phenomenal it is still really hard work listening in noise. I felt like I could hear about 1 in 8 words and so my tried and trusted 'nod and smile' came into it's own. That's quite tiring though so the later it got (and the more wine I drank) the more unreliable this became. Lip reading is more useless because it's dark so there are even less clues to work with. I'm pretty sure I randomly started talking about 'herons' at one point - got a very confused look but I still haven't figured out what the actual topic was.... melons? crayons? Felons? Who knows!  It's always a bit embarrasing when you realise your response to someones question was completely inappropriate and I've never been very good at being assertive about my hearing - or lack of it. In the long run I hope that the implant will help in these situations but these are difficult listening situations for 'normal' hearing people so I'm trying to keep my expectations on this realistic. 

Listening in quiet has continued to develop over the last week and speech in quiet is sounding a lot clearer and 'speech-like'. People are starting to get expression in their voices and it's becoming easier to identify and differentiate between voices. I'm not yet able to listen without lipreading but with a bit more practice it feels like I will be able to do it. 

Working in an office has been somewhat enlightening though. When I'm not in clinic at work I'm based in a fairly large open-plan office. My colleagues are a noisy bunch!! I've never realised quite how much desk-tapping, fingers drumming, mutterings, chair rocking goes on?! I hear you learn to zone these kinds of noises out but I'm not sure how so I've taken to shushing everyone for the time being! Luckily I have very understanding colleagues so no-one has been too offended so far....