SIDEBAR: London Times
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July 23, 2002
'It is not easy. But it is beautiful to have the choice of sound or silence'
by Peter Fogarty
At first I heard nothing. Instead I felt pain: a piercing, terrible stabbing in my auditory nerve. Three to four months like this went by. I wore the implant at the lowest setting, slowly increasing the sensitivity of the microphone over time as my brain grew accustomed to the pain. I could distinguish the sounds of objects as different kinds of pain. A door slamming was a firm, heavy jolt to my cortex, while a siren stroked my nerves with a razor blade.
Not surprisingly, I did not flick the switch on all that often — I could spend weeks without turning it on — and I learnt a truth: silence is golden.
Then I went to a drum’n’bass party at a nightclub. I don’t remember who played but I remember the end of the party. I have always had good bone conduction hearing — everyone has this, so dance music was perfect for me, especially breakbeats: drum’n’bass, two-step, R&B and hip-hop. Anything with arrhythmic bass lines moved me: I felt the tunes and thus heard them.
But this time, when I walked out, I heard the early-morning traffic down the road. The sun was coming up and I could feel, and hear, the party going strong behind me. I could hear!
Everything after that was a new experience. The sound of my nylon jacket as I walked was a whisper on the wind. The loud sound of my urine splashing into the lavatory basin was a revelation. You guys listen to this stuff every day? People’s voices were incongruous, an oddity, but appropriate to appearances.
The sound is still as painful as before, although I have developed a tolerance. The simulation provides me with information, but also with a strange feeling: a magnetic field spins on the left side of my head behind and immediately beneath my ear on the surface of my skull. The flesh gives if I push in behind my ear and I feel the edge of the internal processor.
I still don’t switch myself on all that often. When I’m in a club, or when I feel like it, or just for the hell of it. Or when people want to talk to me. This is why I have a cochlear implant: to help the hearing people around me to live with me — so they can understand my speech. It’s my attempt to cross an uncrossable divide so that I may live and work as a human being in society.
I hadn’t expected a “miracle” cure. In fact, I was ambivalent about the implant and refused to have it until it became apparent that I was unemployable because of my deafness. What I had hoped for was a higher quality of hearing, and that I might be able to use the telephone.
Now I can, after a fashion, based on 80 per cent guesswork and 20 per cent technique. OK. The first letter of the word is a, b, c, d, e, e? OK. The first letter of the word is E, right? Yes. How many letters? Four? OK, what’s the next letter — a? Yes, easee? Oh! easy.
No, it is not. But it is beautiful to have the choice of sound or silence.
Peter Fogarty, 27, a writer, lost his hearing at 22 months after a meningitis infection. He had a cochlear implant three years ago.
July 23, 2002
'It is not easy. But it is beautiful to have the choice of sound or silence'
by Peter Fogarty
At first I heard nothing. Instead I felt pain: a piercing, terrible stabbing in my auditory nerve. Three to four months like this went by. I wore the implant at the lowest setting, slowly increasing the sensitivity of the microphone over time as my brain grew accustomed to the pain. I could distinguish the sounds of objects as different kinds of pain. A door slamming was a firm, heavy jolt to my cortex, while a siren stroked my nerves with a razor blade.
Not surprisingly, I did not flick the switch on all that often — I could spend weeks without turning it on — and I learnt a truth: silence is golden.
Then I went to a drum’n’bass party at a nightclub. I don’t remember who played but I remember the end of the party. I have always had good bone conduction hearing — everyone has this, so dance music was perfect for me, especially breakbeats: drum’n’bass, two-step, R&B and hip-hop. Anything with arrhythmic bass lines moved me: I felt the tunes and thus heard them.
But this time, when I walked out, I heard the early-morning traffic down the road. The sun was coming up and I could feel, and hear, the party going strong behind me. I could hear!
Everything after that was a new experience. The sound of my nylon jacket as I walked was a whisper on the wind. The loud sound of my urine splashing into the lavatory basin was a revelation. You guys listen to this stuff every day? People’s voices were incongruous, an oddity, but appropriate to appearances.
The sound is still as painful as before, although I have developed a tolerance. The simulation provides me with information, but also with a strange feeling: a magnetic field spins on the left side of my head behind and immediately beneath my ear on the surface of my skull. The flesh gives if I push in behind my ear and I feel the edge of the internal processor.
I still don’t switch myself on all that often. When I’m in a club, or when I feel like it, or just for the hell of it. Or when people want to talk to me. This is why I have a cochlear implant: to help the hearing people around me to live with me — so they can understand my speech. It’s my attempt to cross an uncrossable divide so that I may live and work as a human being in society.
I hadn’t expected a “miracle” cure. In fact, I was ambivalent about the implant and refused to have it until it became apparent that I was unemployable because of my deafness. What I had hoped for was a higher quality of hearing, and that I might be able to use the telephone.
Now I can, after a fashion, based on 80 per cent guesswork and 20 per cent technique. OK. The first letter of the word is a, b, c, d, e, e? OK. The first letter of the word is E, right? Yes. How many letters? Four? OK, what’s the next letter — a? Yes, easee? Oh! easy.
No, it is not. But it is beautiful to have the choice of sound or silence.
Peter Fogarty, 27, a writer, lost his hearing at 22 months after a meningitis infection. He had a cochlear implant three years ago.
posted by oga at
2:35 PM
