1st Mapping
What a difference that first mapping makes!
I went back in to give my audiologist my concerns and she reassured me that this process would take time and that my experience with the implant upon activation was not only normal, but would get better. As if to demonstrate, she mapped me out again, and almost instantly voices sounded much more human.
This time she activated volume control on my implant, turning it up to a point that sounded...really clear.
Don't get me wrong, my audio experience is still far from perfect. I cannot distinguish some sounds from the background noise still...but the background noise itself is incredibly lessened.
Today I was able to hear the radio with some clarity for the first time since before middle school. "Electric Avenue" came on, and after a while I was able to recognize it and then follow along with it...the clarity it came through with was astounding! Unfortunately not every song comes across like that, but I beleive it will improve over time, possibly with subsequent mappings.
It's a lot to take in, not just the actual experience of hearing in a new way, but the material governing how to work the equipment and the things that it is possible to do with them. Maybe a year from now I will be completely comfortable with my implant, plugging it into my cd player or computer speakers and not having problems with anything except for the occasional?
Ate out at Joe's Crab Shack. I definitely recommend it, if just for their drinks. OMG, so good! Was tempted to order more than one just to try out another of their tasty looking offerings!
You might thing video gaming is too new to have many urban legends associated with it, but it does have a few. In the early 1980's, it is said that several arcade cabinets named Polybius started showing up mysteriously in isolated neighborhood arcades. Legend has it that people who played the machine came down with a host of complaints, including memory loss, nausea, headaches, addictive behaviors and the like. The machine was supposedly a government experiment in subliminal messaging, and were only extant for less than a year before suddenly vanishing.
Read some hilarious anecdotal stories about Action Park, the most dangerous water park in the world (incidentally, also the first one in the United States! It's located in New Jersey, and still operates, albeit under a different name.)
Rumor has it that Axl Rose has recently banned Slash t-shirts from being worn at his concerts. How childish can you get?