Life Before Cancer, Part 1

This entry will mark the first of a new series I will be running for the next little while. The only break in the series will come Thursday when I go over the results of my scan. I hope you enjoy this new series as much as I am going to enjoy writing it.

I did not always have cancer, and I was not always doing chemo and battling this disease. There was a time when I had my hearing and I was free of illness.

Sometimes when your in the middle of battling something you lose your perspective and your whole world becomes swallowed up by the big C word and then it the focus of everything you talk about all the time.

Today I want to break that cycle and take some time this week to talk about a few big events that took place before the biggest one of all happened.

I can remember very clearly waking up in the hospital after having the implant surgery done. My life was about to change in a big way. I was going to be able to hear for the first time. The thing you have to remember is that a Cochlear works for different people in different ways. Some people can hear sounds but it is not all that clear well others hear things pretty well and can make things out. You dont know what your personal situation is going to be until you get your activation done.

Once the surgery is done it takes about 4 weeks for the surgical site to heal up and then you meet with your specialist to have the rest of the hookup and programming done.

I remember very clearly, the wait for the big day. In my case it took 5 weeks for the site to heal sufficiently enough for me to entertain having everything else done. I met with the specialist after anxiously waiting all the day before. You have no idea what it is like to sit and wait knowing that one day later your going to be able to hear.

Once I met with the specialist, he explained all the external parts to me. He then began the process of hooking me up. there is a magnet that holds the device to the side of my head and that is also where the surgical site is which was a little tender but I was too excited to care.

He hooked up the device and before he turned it on we had some conversation around what to expect and what the future would hold. Then the moment of truth, the device was turned on. I heard a bit of crackling and then the first few sounds of my life.

I am going to spend an entire entry on some of the sounds that I heard for the very first time and what it was like to hear them.

What I am going to do tomorrow is walk you through the stages of programming a CI device and what it was like to go through programming as well as doing a separate entry on speech therapy and learning how to talk.

I know I have glossed over this stuff in the past but I think I am going to focus more time on it now.

Thursday will be a special update on my progress as I get the results of the latest scan of my tumor.

I want to spend the next little while talking about what it was like to hear and live life for the first time as a hearing abled individual and before I got diagnosed with Cancer. I think it would be fun to share all that with you.

I hope you stick around as I walk you through the steps of programming and all the fun that comes with that.

Hang in there, the best is yet to come!

LiveSTRONG!