Shocking sensation

[Guest guest]

Hello - I see there were a couple of posts regarding the shocking sensation,

wishing for more description of what this felt like.  I can't speak for

the shocking feeling that might indicate there is something wrong with the

implant itself, I can only describe what I felt because my ear was hearing

sounds it was totally, completely, deaf to, prior to implantation.  And what I

mean by that is, when tested, my audiogram shows " NO RESPONSE " to sounds above

2000 Hz in my implanted ear, prior to implantation.  Looking at my earlier

audiograms, this was true as far back as I have copies.

When all of the electrodes were activated, whenever the sound occurred that was

in that 2000 or above Hz range, my brain felt like someone had blanketed it with

a vibrating pad, so whenever the sound happened, my brain would buzz like a

vibration sensation.  It wasn't a sound that it heard, it was just a deep,

vibrating buzzzzzzzzzz.  The sounds that my ear was use to hearing prior to

implanting, meaning sounds that were below 2000 Hz, I heard them as true sounds

and my brain did not vibrate.  After several visits with my audiologist

describing this sensation, she thought that it might help to turn off those

electrodes that delivered sounds in the high frequency because I had never heard

them before and my brain didn't know how to process those sounds, and it did

help tremendously when she turned them off.  I was able to continue my rehab

with the remaining electrodes, and as my brain got accustomed to hearing sounds

again, and working once again after so many years of being a lazy slob (imagine

that, it wanted my other ear to do all the work!!), we gradually turned up the

volume on the sounds I could hear.  Once my brain was conditioned again to

hearing sounds below 2000 Hz at normal volume (tested at 25 dB across all Hz),

we gradually turned the electrodes on to see if I could tolerate sounds above

2000 Hz, and if I could hear them as sounds instead of vibrations, and I did. 

So the method worked, for me.

It is my personal opinion, and experience, that my brain didn't know what to do

with information it had never processed before in its entire life.  So,

much like a person who has never walked (never heard) who wants to run a

marathon (hear) for the first time, you have to gradually condition your body

(brain) to be able to run (hear) for long periods of time.  So like a runner,

the brain, after so many years of not doing anything, needs to gradually get

conditioned to hearing sound, and then gradually learn how to process those

sounds into words or environmental sounds (relating what the sound is from).  It

is a long process, it can take months or years to get the brain to function as

it is intended to function.  And the length of time will depend on how long the

ear was deaf.  My time frame was this:  I was implanted March 15, 2007,

activated April 4th.  We turned off the electrodes in July 2007.  In October I

learned I was hearing sounds from 250Hz up to 6000 Hz, but at 40-45 dB.  So to

improve that to 20-25 dB, I increased my processor volume by 1 each week until I

was at 9 the last week before my December 2007 appointment.  When I was tested

in December 2007, I was hearing at 20-25 dB.  It was at that time we activated

the electrodes to see if I could tolerate them, and I could.  So my time frame

from activation to hearing in the normal frequency with all electrodes, 8

months.  After that I focused on rehabbing  for word comprehension.

Now, hopefully those people who were implanted and received true shocking

sensations due to a faulty implant, and subsequently were reimplanted with

successful results will respond with a description of what that shocking

sensation was like for them.  And perhaps they will have an explanation from

their surgeon as to what happened to cause the shocking sensation, too.

HTH