CI Love
Cacophony to Symphony My best friend came to visit this past weekend-- thought y'all would enjoy this photo! Thanks for reading!
Mon, Mar 24 2014

Brag Alert
Cacophony to Symphony Made it in my local newspaper! Check out the article at the link below! [link] Thanks for reading!
Thu, Feb 13 2014

A Semester in Review
Cacophony to Symphony As the year comes to a close, I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch up on my blog and let everyone know what I've been up to. A lot has gone on since I last checked in! Here's it all, both the good and the bad:AugustIt was the week before I was set to leave for college, and I decided to go in for one last mapping so I could go off hearing well. I left hearing gr...
Tue, Dec 24 2013

My Experience With the Nucleus 6
Cacophony to Symphony I posted a review of the Nucleus 6 on Cochlear Implant Online's website. Check it out!In other news, I leave for college in a week. It feels like I've been waiting to go forever, but now that the time has finally come, I'm in total denial mode! I'm so excited for new experiences, but I guess you could say I'm less than wild about packing :)Also, I am finally hearing w...
Fri, Aug 09 2013

"Look Familiar?"
Cacophony to Symphony My sister is a junior in college and majoring in communication disorders. Right now she's taking a summer Intro to Audiology class. She just sent me this picture of her study materials with the text message "look familiar?" and I couldn't help but laugh. I'm sure this list will look very familiar to many of you as well!  I can still remember being a kid sitting...
Mon, Jun 24 2013

I did it!
Cacophony to Symphony A few select photos from my high school graduation...My cord is crooked in the first couple (it took me a while to notice) which totally bugs me, but what can ya do! With my dad, sister, mom and grandma! My sister, mom, and I Me and my sisters! This picture of my mom and  I afterward is blurry, but I still love it! Summer has officially starte...
Wed, Jun 19 2013

Progress
Cacophony to Symphony I've had my reimplanted ear turned on for a little over two months now, and things are slowly improving. I have come to realize just how impatient I am! I have been going back to AVT and trying to get in the habit of do listening exercises. It's funny, when I got implanted the first time around everything was so exciting and new. I was eager to hear everything I could...
Thu, May 30 2013

A Special Reunion
Cacophony to Symphony I am in the midst of studying for my AP exams (last ones ever!), so I can't write as much as I'd like, but my school had a ceremony honoring the National Merit Finalists last night. We were able to bring a teacher who was influential in our lives. I chose to bring my speech therapist from my elementary school. She helped me develop clear speech, yes, but she also did ...
Sat, May 04 2013

Bilateral: Take 2 (AKA My Bad Luck)
Cacophony to Symphony Hello! I've been meaning to write an update since my surgery, but as you'll soon find out from reading the rest of my post, things have gotten quite hectic. You know how when you start off with one teeny problem, but then everything kind of snowballs out of control and you feel like if anything else happens, you just might lose it? Yeah, that's about the point I am at...
Wed, Mar 27 2013

4 Years Later- Another Surgery
Cacophony to Symphony After changing my mind a ridiculous number of times,  I will be having my left ear reimplanted on Wednesday, 4 years (down to the week) after it was originally implanted. It will be replaced with another Freedom device. Apparently there's a new straight array that new patients are receiving, but they aren't giving it to reimplanted patients (wouldn't want to change t...
Sat, Mar 09 2013

Court Rules in Favor of Medical Student with Cochlear...
Cacophony to Symphony I found this to be really encouraging. The student sued Creighton University for failing to provide CART access and interpreters, forcing him to take out over $100,000 in loans to pay for them himself. Hopefully this will set a precedent for future students with hearing loss in college/medical school/grad school. For more info, here are a few links:Article OverviewSum...
Mon, Jan 21 2013

College-Bound and Crackling Sounds
Cacophony to Symphony I'm getting bad at this whole blogging thing. I'm sure no one wants to hear my excuses about how busy I've been and whatnot..So, since it's 3:30 AM and I have bronchitis and can't sleep, you will get a full-blown update. Lucky you :)I don't quite know where to begin. I'm sure those of you who actually still read are sick of hearing about the whole college process (I k...
Fri, Dec 28 2012

Spam Warning
Cacophony to Symphony Just dropping a quick note to let me readers know that the email address I use to send/receive emails for my blog was taken over today and sending spam. I have changed my password and I believe I have fixed the issue, but if you receive any fishy emails from that address, please do not open them or click on any links! Thanks!I'll leave you with the picture from me vot...
Mon, Nov 05 2012

College Guide
Cacophony to Symphony A little over a year ago, I posted about wanting to create a College Guide specifically for students with hearing loss. It got put on the back burner for a while, but Rachel and Elizabeth from CI Online expressed interest in the project, so it got restarted. I am proud to present to you the Ultimate College Guide for Students with Hearing Loss, and many thanks to the ...
Wed, Oct 03 2012

Guest Post: How Tinnitus Affects Hearing Health
Cacophony to Symphony Below is a guest post written by John O'Connor who told me, "Over the past few years I have become more and more interested in hearing loss. My father and grandfathers along with various other family members and friends suffer from hearing loss. I feel that there is a general lack on understanding around the issue and it is right to try and spread awarenes...
Fri, Jul 20 2012

Good Customer Service
Cacophony to Symphony Most of the time, my cochlear implants make it so that the person I am conversing with has no idea I am deaf. Occasionally, however, conversations are a struggle. One such incident occurred when I went to order lunch at a bakery a few weeks ago. It was noisy and the cashier seemed to see no reason to speak any clearer than a mumble. The interaction was painful as I st...
Sun, Jul 15 2012

Is it offensive to find people with disabilities doing...
Cacophony to Symphony I found this article to be really interesting. I'd like to hear what my readers think! Here is an excerpt from it, and the link to the entire thing can be found here."Let me be clear about the intent of this inspiration porn; it's there so that non-disabled people can put their worries into perspective. So they can go, "Oh well if that kid who doesn't have any legs ca...
Thu, Jul 12 2012

Musings
Cacophony to Symphony Murphy's Law of High School: You will be one of the few people stupid enough to stay up until 4 AM to see the results of your SAT II Subject Test... and you will also be part of the "small percentage" of people whose score was mysteriously not released online. Yeah, I knew I would regret waiting up..I am pleased to report that I've been doing really well hearing-wise ...
Fri, Jun 22 2012

Miss me?
Cacophony to Symphony Yes, I have been AWOL. Mostly because, well, I don't have much to say. Bet you never thought that day would come, huh?!Hearing and implant stuff is going well. Had my 5 year anniversary of getting my first implant last week. I can remember it like it was just yesterday, but it's also hard to believe that it was only five short years ago that I was stressing over wheth...
Mon, May 28 2012

Big Changes- Bye bye, CI's!
Cacophony to Symphony All of you know that high school has been filled with its ups and downs for me. Fortunately, it seems I'll be finished a year earlier than originally expected.I am proud to announce that I have been recruited to attend Harvard University for the fall of 2012. I didn't even have to apply. Apparently the admissions officers came across my blog and were so impressed...
Sun, Apr 01 2012

Rookie Mistake
Cacophony to Symphony So, a couple of weeks ago I got to observe in the OR for a week as part of the program I was participating in. The first day was disastrous, to put it mildly. Once the masks went on, I felt completely lost. The equipment was noisy, the doctors and nurses mumbled, and the operating room doesn't exactly have the best acoustics. I left frustrated and feeling defeated.Whe...
Fri, Mar 16 2012

Expectations Surpassed
Cacophony to Symphony Fourteen years ago, the journey began.My mom listened in a daze as the audiologist threw around words like "decibels" and "audiogram". The audiologist pointed to a graph with scribbled X's and O's. She placed her finger on the line marked zero. "This is the level that most children hear at," she said, and then dragged her finger down to the line that said seventy, "th...
Sat, Feb 18 2012

Coming out of hiding...
Cacophony to Symphony Well, it's been a while. I don't really count my last post as a real post since I gave absolutely no updates about what's been going on with me, so it has really been about four months since I've last posted. Hard to believe, isn't it?Things have been busy. The school year started off okay. I went through a rough time for a while... I was just in a really bad place. I...
Tue, Dec 27 2011

Dear Abby
Cacophony to Symphony I spotted this in my newspaper this morning. I can't recall encountering this type of reaction before, but I can see how some people could respond ignorantly. Have any of you experienced this before?Dear Abby: My 16-year-old son, “Victor,” is hearing-impaired. He wears hearing aids in both ears. The aids are small and not easily seen.Recently we were in a new...
Mon, Nov 07 2011

Quick Udpdate
Cacophony to Symphony I know I have some comments and messages that I need to respond to. I just got back in town yesterday from AG Bell's Leadership Opportunities For Teens program, and I had a blast. It was such a powerful, emotional experience that I will blog about in much more depth later because I just had my wisdom teeth out this morning. I was doing well but now all the numbness ha...
Fri, Jul 29 2011

Failure
Cacophony to Symphony The title does *not* reference a CI failure of any sort.Remember my freshman year?Remember how hard I fought for accommodations? How much I struggled?And then remember sophomore year? How I barely got any sleep? How I accepted the fact I'd just have to work harder than everyone else? How I figured if I just studied hard enough I could make up for what I missed in hear...
Tue, Jul 19 2011

The Difference-Part 3
Cacophony to Symphony Part 1Part 2At that moment, I realized I had a conscious decision to make. I could get defensive, cry, storm out and say they weren't legally allowed to ask me about my hearing loss (were they? I'm still not even sure?), or I could put my advocacy skills to good use and actually educate them. So I put on a composed front and reassured them that everything would be fin...
Thu, Jun 30 2011

The Difference
Cacophony to Symphony Occasionally, people with little experience with hearing loss will make a hearing-related comment or ask a question that sounds absolutely ridiculous and stupid to someone who has dealt with hearing loss his or her entire life. It's easy to jump on these people, and write them off as ignorant of hearing loss and possibly even people with disabilities as a whole. What ...
Wed, Jun 29 2011

My Greatest Accomplishment?
Cacophony to Symphony So I'm going to a program this summer for teens with hearing loss. I'm excited for it, but before I go we have an assignment to answer a series of personal questions about ourselves using only a visual for each question (images, photographs, etc), but no words. I haven't had issue with the majority of it, but I am stuck on one last question "What is your greatest acco...
Mon, Jun 27 2011

It passed right by...
Cacophony to Symphony Monday was my 4 year anniversary of bionic hearing! It was a relatively uneventful day.. I kinda just remembered that it held any significance!Now it's just normal. Wearing my CI's is just so natural, that I never really think too much of it. My new favorite hearing thing to do is blast my car radio and sing along. They're still not perfect. I still need frequent mapp...
Sat, Jun 18 2011

Speech
Cacophony to Symphony I speak well. I didn't always, but after many years of speech therapy, I'd say that if you didn't know anything about my hearing ability, based on hearing me speak, you probably wouldn't suspect anything. Occasionally I don't fully enunciate the /s/ sound, but I've been told that after I got my CI's my speech improved... Anyways, that's not really the point...
Wed, Jun 15 2011

Quote du Jour
Cacophony to Symphony "No one ever said life would be easy... they just promised it would be worth it."Today, I felt like Alexander.. I haven't even taken any of my hard exams yet. However, my day started off with locker clean-out during study hall. During this time of absolute chaos, a herd of rather tall teenage guys was stampeding through the halls like no body's business. Apparent...
Thu, Jun 02 2011

College on the Brain- Input needed!
Cacophony to Symphony I just have to survive exam week and then I'll be done with sophomore year! Then, the day after I get out of school, I get to experience the wonderful pleasure of watching my sister graduate. What could be better than waking up early on the first day of summer to watch all 1200 students in my sister's class walk across stage and listen to a bunch of speeches from peop...
Sun, May 29 2011

and a nice day to you too...
Cacophony to Symphony I'm going to post an update about lots of things soon. I don't have time right now since this seems to be a week month filled with stress, no sleep and tears. :( At least I'm almost done?!Anyway, I have always allowed anonymous comments... I know some people have privacy concerns and/or don't want to create a Blogger account. I haven't had any problems with it up unti...
Tue, May 10 2011

It has its perks
Cacophony to Symphony After getting 3 hours of sleep the night before...I went to bed especially early and slept especially soundly. So imagine my surprise when I found out that these fell and these lit up the sky as these blasted.All while I got to catch up on my beauty sleep.Jealous?I know my family was! Thanks for reading!
Sun, Apr 17 2011

Sharing Your Experience
Cacophony to Symphony Tonight, I met a friend of mine for dinner. As I was waiting for her to show up,I enjoyed people-watching and looking around at the various customers in the restaurant. I noticed a middle-aged man, directly in my line of vision, with two hearing aids eating dinner with his wife/girlfriend/lady friend. I spent the next few minutes watching their interaction, noticing t...
Sun, Mar 20 2011

The last three months, in bullets
Cacophony to Symphony A few months back I went into a class filled with audiology/SLP grad students to tell my story and answer questions. It was a great experience, and it was nice to see how eager they all were to become the best professionals possible. To be honest, grad school looked much more interesting than high school, but it probably isn't always that way!I got an iPhone 5! I am i...
Wed, Mar 16 2011

Using the FM with the N5: Revisited
Cacophony to Symphony I've been meaning to post an update about this for a while, especially since I've noticed a lot of people have found my blog when they were searching for information about using the Nucleus 5 with the FM adapter. Well, when I posted before, I had no personal experience using it since I had used the MyLink neck loop which, despite its ugliness/cumbersomeness, worked pr...
Wed, Feb 02 2011

Frustrated
Cacophony to Symphony So, I'm taking a class that basically is an introduction to health care careers. The unit we're currently doing is vital signs, learning how to take blood pressure, pulse, etc. In order to take blood pressure, we have to use stethoscopes.Many months ago the special electronic stethoscope was purchased, and I even got another programming on my implant specifically for ...
Sat, Jan 29 2011

School's Out...
Cacophony to Symphony (for 2 weeks)Hallelujah!Soo glad to be out (and even more excited that I only have 6 months until I am DONE with this school forever. My district divides the high schools up 9th-10th graders and another school for 11th-12th graders). I did well on all of my exams; even better than I expected. I'm leaving in a couple of days to fly up north (all by myself!) to visit a ...
Mon, Dec 20 2010

Check it Out!
Cacophony to Symphony If you're an AG Bell member, check out the latest issue of Volta Voices. More specifically, page 38 featuring yours truly :)If you're not a member of AG Bell and would like the article emailed to you, just let me know. I'm going to see if there's a way I can post part of the PDF on here.Thanks for reading!
Tue, Nov 23 2010

Getting Creative
Cacophony to Symphony As long-time readers probably know, getting captioning on school videos has been a struggle for me, (and I'm sure many other D/HoH students as well). All of my teacher have dealt with the situation differently, and sometimes I can understand the video pretty well without captions, so long as I don't have to take notes and can just concentrate on the listening part. Ot...
Sun, Nov 21 2010

Raising money for a good cause
Cacophony to Symphony And all you have to do is watch a sweet little video! Every time this video is viewed, various sponsors will donate 2 cents to the American Society for Deaf Children. I must admit this is the first time I've heard of this organization, but it sounds like they do great things and the video is pretty cool!Thanks for reading!
Tue, Nov 16 2010

Search for teenage and adults deaf actors for upcoming TV...
Cacophony to Symphony No, this is not turning into a news blog :) I will post an update about myself soon, there just hasn't been much of anything to report. I saw this page on Facebook after a few of my friends "liked" it, and thought some reader might be interested. The plot sounds interesting, and it would be pretty cool if a "typical" speaking, hearing deaf kid was plucked from everyda...
Fri, Oct 08 2010

Deaf teacher publicizes discrimination, gets suspended
Cacophony to Symphony So it just seems that there has been a lot of hearing loss/discrimination related new in my area lately. This article caught my eye when I was reading the newspaper this morning (Yes, I read the paper and always have. My friends like to make fun of me for doing so, but I'm always well informed!)My summary: Kathleen Nosek is a deaf special ed teacher and has been teach...
Fri, Oct 08 2010

Followup Article- Deafness in the Legal System
Cacophony to Symphony Yesterday, I posted about a deaf man freed after a DNA test proved him innocent of a crime that he had already spend 20 years in prison for.Today, I saw a great article that talked about his conviction and exoneration, with much of the focus on his deafness and how it impacted the case. Here is the link to the article, along with some quotes that I thought were ...
Sat, Oct 02 2010

Wrongly convicted deaf man freed after 20 years
Cacophony to Symphony Not the type of stories I usually post, but it was in the newspaper and caught my eye. Thought it was interesting, and wanted to share!Stephen Matthew Brodie, 39 lost his hearing to meningitis at 18 months, and communicates using ASL. He was convicted of sexually assaulting a five year old girl in 1990. Turns out, he didn't actually do it. The following quote fr...
Fri, Oct 01 2010

Sweet Sixteen
Cacophony to Symphony I turned 16 on Monday, then got my license on Thursday. As great as it was having the day off of school (since my birthday also happened to fall on Labor Day), being sick put a bit of a damper on things. I went to the DPS on Thursday, since it was a Jewish holiday and I didn't want to have to miss school twice. Stood in line for 2 hours (starting at 7 AM..way too earl...
Sun, Sep 12 2010

FM with the N5
Cacophony to Symphony I've found that my blog has had multiple searches about how to use the FM with the N5 processor. Currently, I use the MyLink neckloop instead of a boot (using T-coil) and the SmartLink Transmitter, both shown. Recently, I went to look at the Cochlear store's newest items, in search of the microphone covers (I had a mishap in putting mine on, which resulted in nee...
Wed, Sep 08 2010

Hearing Loss, Confidence, and my Second Week of School
Cacophony to Symphony Week 2 was also successful! The homework load has increased, and there has been an annoying amount of "busy-work" but it has certainly been bearable. It was pretty uneventful (except for a bunch of other sophomores unofficially declared on Tuesday "Scrub Day" which I find to be terrifying and cruel. If you don't know what it is, I'll leave it up to your imagination. H...
Sat, Sep 04 2010