Activation Day!

August 24th, 2018

This was a major day! I called activation day. Activation day is when my audiologist, who is a wonderful Audiologist with her own practice called, Chicago Hearing Care, turned on my new cochlear implant. It is the N7 made by Cochlear. My audiologist and friend, Marcel Luna, asked me to write a blog about my second cochlear implant journey. So this is my attempt at apprising people of how its going and not to be scared. During my audiology appointment, my audiologist had to turn my new cochlear implant (implanted in the left ear) off and left the right one on. I definitely noticed a difference! I am now wearing two N7s which are bluetooth. This means music on my phone and phone calls can be made straight to my cochlear implants. There is also a very cool app from Cochlear that you can download on your iphone. The app lets you control volume and lets you see battery levels. I will talk more about how I use the app in the days to come. 

On this same day, I was meeting family at the Kerryman for dinner. We sat outside. It was a challenge to hear as anyone knows downtown, Chicago can be quite noisy with people honking and ambulance and police sirens. However, I took it as a learning experience. I did notice since my batteries were brand new and not fully charged, one of them died. I definitely noticed that I needed both of them to hear. One was not enough. That is a scary revelation to realize. Luckily , I still had my N6 with me and that helped me the rest of the night. One more thing, I used my gps on my phone to help me get to my spothero parking before dinner and the gps spoke directly to my cochlear implants. That was neat!! NO more putting on the phone clip.

I also got a pretty neat backpack from Cochlear and a tv streamer, extra batters and a aqua accessory! Also neat is the usb charging plugs for my batteries. You can charge your batteries anywhere you have a usb port so now I can charge one in the car!