We had our closing social for our Japanese exchange student. It is kind of a last hooray for the families and their students. Dinner is served and there is a program which includes performances by some of the boys. This year we went by ourselves to the dinner as our student had gotten sick and was transferred to a local hotel where nurses and other personnel could look after him. Our student lasted until the last afternoon of his stay to get ill though so we are grateful.
It was a bit lonely being at our table without our student, but it was fun to watch the other boys perform. A dance group from a local college also performed and got us all off of our feet and moving. The only bad part of the evening came when Chance started complaining that one of his implants was not working well. You would think that it would be o.k. to listen for one program without one of the implants, but Chance did not think so. As luck would have it, the implant that was working was on the ear facing away from where the performers were. To make matters worse, the sound bouncing all over the room was not conducive to being easily heard. Some people were quite clear and easy to understand, while some were not.
Chance did not like hearing with only one ear at all. He kept asking us what was said, and finally he turned to me in exasperation and said,"It is so hard for me to hear what they are saying!" So we transferred the processors from the ear facing away from the program so his hearing ear was now facing the speakers. This helped him enough so that he was not just exasperated, but Chance still did not like only hearing with one ear. Chance ended up moving down on the floor where he seemed to enjoy the program more, but he had many more questions about what was going on then he does when he has both implants on.
I think this two ear thing really is the best scenario for Chance to hear. He is accustomed to hearing with two ears just like the rest of us and does not appreciate it when he is forced to hear with only one.
1 comment:
Amen! I had an experience last spring where the battery died in one implant and the other battery wasn't available, that taught me how important two implants are. I was in a dark car with two friends talking in the front seat, and I was in the back. I went from understanding almost everything they said, before the battery died, to only getting a word here or there when I only had one ear to hear with. It was even my best ear that had a good battery and I still couldn't get anything but words here or there. The miracal of bilateral implants really hit me then!
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