Cacophony to Symphony

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

Sophomore Year- Week 1
Cacophony to Symphony So far, everything has been pretty good and my teachers have been wonderful (knock on wood). We've watched a few movies, and every time they have either been captioned (knock on wood), or the teacher has told me in advance and worked out how I will get the information. My hearing has been great (knock on wood) and I actually went for a mapping before school started, b...
Mon, Aug 30 2010

Guest Post by Joey of BTaC
Cacophony to Symphony The following is a guest post by Joey from BigTeethAndClouds.com. If you would like to write a guest post, please contact me with your idea. At this time, I am not interested in guest posts for advertising or those that are specifically about a technology that I do not/have not used. Thank you!Our house has a nifty feature that wasn’t advertised by any real esta...
Thu, Aug 26 2010

A long way to go
Cacophony to Symphony A few days ago, I was at a good friend's house with a group of girls. I'm close with some of them, but there were a couple who I was friends with when I was younger but haven't talked to very much in recent years. I was discussing how I was taking my driver's test the following day (which I passed, by the way! Yeah!) and how my parents were being even more paranoid th...
Sat, Aug 21 2010

Alarming rate of teen hearing loss
Cacophony to Symphony I figure most of you have heard this by now, but being a teen I think it alarms me that much more to consider the number of friends that I have who will likely require hearing assistance when they are older. So, I'm posting this for those who already haven't already heard...1 in 5 teens in the US has a slight hearing loss.*1 in 20 US teens have mild or worsening heari...
Thu, Aug 19 2010

A little bit of everything
Cacophony to Symphony Full disclosure: For the past couple of weeks, I've been feeling burnt out and tired of the hearing loss "world", and felt like I had nothing left to give or receive. I was all but ready to take a break, but just today had some exciting hearing related things occur that I will share once everything is final. It gave me another "kick" and a renewed fire for...
Tue, Aug 17 2010

The Remote
Cacophony to Symphony The Nucleus 5 CP810 processor comes with a remote. It certainly seems to be one of those love it or hate it sort of things. I don't think it should be a deciding factor in choosing an implant/processor, but I can't say how many times I've heard "You should get brand X because you don't have to fool around with the settings or have to deal with a remote." Or, conversel...
Sun, Aug 08 2010

Lipreading Fail: A Frightening "deaf moment"
Cacophony to Symphony After a long day of SAT classes and a night of getting engrossed in the latest novel I was reading, I finally fell into a deep sleep late that night. I slept soundly, dreaming of puppies and butterflies..*shake, shake* I rubbed my eyes. Why was someone awaking my slumber at this unearthly hour of *glances at clock* 9 AM?! I rolled over and shut my eyes, only for me to...
Mon, Aug 02 2010

Comfortable Kinds of Hearing Aids
Cacophony to Symphony The following is a guest post from a hearing aid center employee. If you would like to write a guest post, write a comment or send an email to pinklam94 'at' yahoo 'dot'com (replacing at and dot with the respective symbols). I will be back to writing some posts of my own very soon, don't think I've given up on writing!- LAMMany people will tell you that hearing ...
Fri, Jul 30 2010

The GED of IEP's- A Guest Post
Cacophony to Symphony The following is a guest blog post, as written by "Moxy", a fellow teenage girl with hearing loss. I'm sure she would greatly appreciate any comments! Are you interested in writing a guest blog post? Post a comment or email me with the topic you would like to write about, and I will get back to you. So, you've accepted that your child has a hearing loss. ...
Wed, Jul 21 2010

Comedy, Deafness, and Political Correctness
Cacophony to Symphony One thing that I've increasingly noticed on the internet is the argument of political correctness. Not only in terms of names used to describe people (hearing-impaired vs. deaf vs. hard-of-hearing), but also in terms of joking- what's okay, what isn't. I do think part of it is due to the fact that over the internet it's very hard to interpret tone of voice for tongue-...
Fri, Jul 16 2010

AG Bell (2)- Friday Afternoon and Evening
Cacophony to Symphony On Friday afternoon, we were given the options to listen to listen to some of the speakers. They gave us a list of sessions that they though might be interesting to teens, and we signed up for the ones we wanted to go to. I went to three and they were all very good. Here is a brief summary of them:Teen Tales of Hearing LossPresenters: Melanie Paticoff, James Barden, a...
Mon, Jul 12 2010

Orlando/AG Bell (1)- Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Cacophony to Symphony I'm baaack! I thought you guys would like a short summary of each things we did, from a teen attendee perspective.The convention didn't officially start until Friday, so we spent the first two days there exploring Disney. On Wednesday evening, we went to Magic Kingdom. I'm not a huge fan of rides, so we mostly marveled at the things there were to see. They also had a ...
Sat, Jul 03 2010

Brace Yourself
Cacophony to Symphony Tomorrow I leave for Orlando to go to AG Bell's biennial convention.I'm really looking forward to meeting up with old friends, as well as making some new ones. I haven't heard of many other bloggers/readers coming to the convention (sounds like everyone is still recuperating from the HLAA convention in Milwaukee!), but if you're going to be there then do stop an...
Tue, Jun 22 2010

FDA Approves Rechargeable Batteries for the N5
Cacophony to Symphony I just received an email from my audiologist that the FDA has approved the rechargeable batteries for the Nucleus 5 processor. Here are some of the details:Cochlear will begin shipping rechargeable batteries starting this upcoming Monday to current Nucleus 5 recipients. People who already have the N5 will receive two standard rechargeable batteries in their primary pr...
Tue, Jun 15 2010

Defying Science
Cacophony to Symphony So, there's a slight bit of controversy over the effects of having two cochlear implants versus just one plus a hearing aid. I personally believe that they both have their pros and cons, but my own experience has led me to believe that it's much easier conversing in background noise with two implants, and music only sounds better. With a hearing and a CI, it always fe...
Sat, Jun 05 2010

a big mush of information
Cacophony to Symphony Remember how I said that I'm occasionally indecisive?Well, I wasn't lying! I still have an announcement, just not the original one that I had planned.So, recently I had time to do some reflecting. And, the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like the right choice. I'm giving up orchestra.Don't get me wrong- I've enjoyed it these past four years. I've learned s...
Sun, May 30 2010

Adorable
Cacophony to Symphony *Note to viewers* Don't bother going on YouTube to read the comments unless you feel like reading a debate that is completely irrelevant to the cuteness of this video :)Thanks for reading!
Sat, May 29 2010

Free Batteries, News
Cacophony to Symphony A reader of this blog who I've become pretty good friends with shared some links with me about free hearing aid batteries. I thought I'd pass them along to anyone who may be interested.*Disclaimer* I have never used, nor do I endorse any of the websites mentioned for free batteries. I advise anyone to take caution when giving out information to an unknown site. If any...
Tue, May 18 2010

Why yes, I am bragging
Cacophony to Symphony Do you ever have those weeks where it seems like nothing is going your way? And you just want to go sit in a corner and cry?Well that's how this past week was for me. And the week before that. I don't want to go into a long rant about it, but there were a lot of things that I had been hoping for..that just didn't happen. Then I got (and still have) bronchitis, a...
Sat, May 01 2010

Announcement....and a contest?
Cacophony to Symphony First and foremost...DeafTeens.org is up and ready for viewing! Take a look around. I can assure you that many hours of planning and perfecting went into this website.The other thing that I wanted to share with you all is that Phonak is having a contest for FM users under the age of 19. There aren't many rules or regulations, but there are plenty of prizes...
Tue, Apr 27 2010

A Year with Two Ears
Cacophony to Symphony Yup, that's right. I've been bilateral for a year, and what a year it's been! Rather than write an entire novel about it, (when you consider I've written over 70 posts in the past year), I thought I could just post some flashbacks. So, here's a post that I posted back in July.April 3rd, 2009. The big day.I managed to survive the two and a half weeks between surgery a...
Sat, Apr 03 2010

Spreading Awareness- That's Just the Way We Hear
Cacophony to Symphony Many of you guys have probably heard about Mel Paticoff. She's the creator of HearingExchange Teens on Facebook and the author of Sophie's Tales, a cute little book about Sophie, a dog who has a cochlear implant. She has several family members with hearing loss and is currently studying deaf education. For last year's Better Hearing and Speech Month competition, she c...
Tue, Mar 30 2010