While driving home from work today, I was listening to a CD that I put together a couple of years ago with a variety of songs on it. About ten minutes into my 40 minute commute, I heard what seemed like wind or a whistle in my car. I remember thinking, “Oh great, my car is making a new sound.” As I focused and tried to figure out what was making this new sound, I came to realize it was in the music! I muted the CD player and it went away, so I turned it back on and listened. I played the song again and really listened. Is it a piccolo or strings? I listened again - I think it is strings! It is a whole orchestra and I can hear the strings! I have been looking on YouTube trying to find the version of the song I was listening to, but I’m not finding it. The song is “The Ballad of the Green Beret.” I am hearing the soft start up of the strings when they begin the crescendo at the words “silver wings.”
I have had my implants 9 years on the left and 3 years on the right and I am still experiencing improvement! I have been procrastinating about scheduling a mapping thinking there hasn’t been enough change to warrant an appointment with my audiologist, but now I’m thinking otherwise.
One of my earliest memories of really knowing that there were things I could not hear was in 9th grade typing class. I never did hear a typewriter bell. How I ever got through that class with a B, I will never know. As I was enjoying hearing more of a song I have liked probably since I was in 9th grade, I was thinking that my cochlear implants give me such wonderful hearing it just might be possible to hear better than normal someday.
