Cacophony to Symphony

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...
Sun, Aug 29 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...
Wed, Aug 25 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...
Fri, Aug 20 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...
Sat, Aug 07 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 ...
Fri, Jul 02 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...
Fri, Jun 04 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...
Sat, May 29 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...
Mon, May 17 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...
Mon, Apr 26 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...
Mon, Mar 29 2010

Mmm Hmm
Cacophony to Symphony Lately, my mom has been insisting that I need to go for a mapping for my CIs. I will admit, 95% of the time, she's right and just notices before I do. But, going every two weeks kind of gets old, and my allergies are causing my hearing to fluctuate a bit, so I'd rather stretch it out as long as I can. My mom doesn't seem to understand this, so I asked her why she and ...
Sat, Mar 27 2010

Perspectives
Cacophony to Symphony I can't help but occasionally wonder how big of a deal my hearing loss is for the people around me. Is it something that makes people act differently around me, or do most people not give it a second thought? This week I've gotten some insight on that, and thought I'd share.A couple of days ago, we had (yet another) fire drill at school. The way they do fire drill at ...
Sat, Mar 27 2010

the tinnitus that wasn't
Cacophony to Symphony My spring break is almost over. The idea of going back to school makes me start hyperventilating (I'm only exaggerating slightly.) I think I speak for all the students and teachers of the world when I scream, "IS IT SUMMER YET?!"Anyway, I was home alone on this lovely spring morning, since my mom and sister had some college meeting to attend, and my dad had work. I'd ...
Thu, Mar 18 2010

Interesting Article
Cacophony to Symphony In all honesty, I'm about to go to sleep and barely skimmed the article. The first few sentences looked promising, so I thought I'd share :PIf I don't find it interesting in the morning, I just may take this post down...Designing A Tool For Operations On People With Severe Or Profound Auditory LossThanks for reading!
Thu, Mar 18 2010

Is it best to know?
Cacophony to Symphony I don't know what caused my hearing loss. I've had some genetic tests, and therefore I do know that it's not from Connexin 26 or Pendred Syndrome, which leaves roughly another million possibilities.Growing up, I always seemed to have one medical issue after another. Whenver things were calm and healthy, an eerie "what's next?" feeling lurked over. Like now.....
Mon, Mar 15 2010

Nucleus System 5- My Experience
Cacophony to Symphony Well, I finally got my new processors on Tuesday. When they say it takes 6-8 weeks to arrive, they're not kidding! I did get pretty impatient, but the important thing is that they did come. Here are some pictures... *sorry for the blurry quality. These were taken from my phone, since my sister decided to steal my camera, even though she has her own...
Sat, Mar 13 2010

Support David's Project
Cacophony to Symphony Calling all kids, their parents, teens, and adults with hearing loss!I have a wonderful project to share with you, and it calls for your participation. David Cluff is 16 years old and has bilateral cochlear implants. He is extremely involved in his community, and even started a Cochlear Implant Teen Support Group at his local hospital. David is al...
Sat, Mar 06 2010

Hearing Loss in the Media
Cacophony to Symphony Whenever deafness and/or CI's are portrayed in TV shows, it's usually with much fanfare (and oftentimes debate) from the hearing loss community. I was quite surprised this evening, while watching my favorite shows, that they had a short story line about deafness. I LOVE Grey's Anatomy, which shouldn't come as a surprise to any of you. ;) I'm going to give my best...
Sat, Mar 06 2010