If you have been following this blog for a while, you know that last year I revived cochlear ear implants. And much to everyone shock it turns out that I am a cochlear ear implant superstar. Before I understood less than 1 percent of spoken English and now am up to 97 percent. The first time I realized I could understand audiobooks I almost shit myself. MEEEE A prelingual Deaf person who has used sign language almost my whole life having this larval of success with my implants? I was so afraid it was a fluke. I kept getting audiobooks from the library and with bated breath would wait to see if I could still understand the narrator.Thankfully it seems my newfound ability to hear and understand audiobooks is here to stay. When I first started to understand audiobooks had to give it my whole attention. That meant sitting down and focusing. Now I don’t have to do that, and I find that I get restless if I sit there. I mean audiobooks are so you can multi-task right? I came up with this andy list at all the ways I use audiobook time.
While coloring
When a therapist first suggested that I take up coloring to help with my anxiety I resisted. Then I quit smoking, and I was desperate for SOMETHING to do with my hands and to self-soothe myself, so I got a coloring book for adults and bought some color ink and tried it out, and now I am hooked. I found that my mind tended to wander, so I tried listening to an audiobook while coloring and I feel like I have won the lottery, That combo is almost perfect in that I am doing something with my hands and my brain is listening to my audiobook. No more smoking when anxious for me!
On the treadmill
I have a confession to make. I HATE cardio. I still can’t fathom the idea that I pay the gym owners money for the privilege to run as fast as I can go to nowhere. Anyways, I do. I can and do listen to music, and I do at times but on those days when I need to just nothing about the fact that I am running to nowheresville i find that an audiobook works like a charm I don’t listen when I am lifting weights or anything like that because counting reps and understanding the audiobook is beyond my skill set. For weight lifting I use Spotify.
At family functions
I am profoundly Deaf and have been since birth, So to keep from dying of boredom when I was younger, I bought a book with me and read that while everyone else did…stuff.. Then I got my implants, and everyone was under the mistaken idea that just because I now COULD understand them did not mean that I WANTED to. Everyone wanted to make up for 36 years of not being able to communicate with me, and that makes me feel very very anxious. Untilm y brain started processing the sounds correctly and I understood audiobooks I spent most of the time hiding. Heh Now I turn on an audiobook, and everyone starts talking stuff like did they do the right thing by teaching me ASL? Should my mom have pushed for an implant in 1983 when it was discovered I was deaf? The point takes away here is they are not talking to ME but rather each other second guessing every descion they made while am listening to a story on my phone.
Getting a tooth pulled
At the time of the tooth, being pulled I was still on disability insurance, so I had to go to a dentist that took disability insurance. I had regular old insurance before I got sick and I have a crappy plan off the marketplace now. When I went to a dentist that only saw people with a few extra dollars the experience was ok. I had a root canal done, and while it wasn’t pleasant, the numbed it to such an event that I did not feel anything for hours and hours. Fast forward to the dentist that saw everyone too poor to see any other dentist it was…painful. I massacred to death about getting it pulled, so I was listening to an audiobook to distract me. It worked until the dentist started pulling. That asshole didn’t even numb it al the wat first. And he was yanking on the tooth. I bet I could have gotten my uncle in the Appalachian motions to take some pliers and pull and it would still be less painful than that crackpot dentist. He got the tooth out and I called him a couple of things that cant be repeated.
