Elevens Rock!

Yesterday afternoon the warming sensation of the morphine was welcomed by the body. The ache is somewhere in my head, but I can't quite define the area. The sensation is oddly familiar and I try to place it in my liminal state of consciousness.
The warm sensation as the morphine wraps around the brain is an unlikely comfort, but I embrace it. I drift back and forth in time and space.

It was just around 100 days ago that I went through this cochlear implant surgery on my left side.

I am back here today, July 23rd, for the surgical implant on my right side, that will make me a bilateral cyborg.

I fight hard to place myself now and recollect from then. I want to piece it together, but I struggle between pain and a sensory overload that is founded in a bit of fear, excitement and now pain. The obvious sense of hearing is once again missing. AWOL.

The ache and throb that first hits as one eye opens is quickly dissipated by the flick of an IV.

"This will help right away for pain" says a female voice.

I try to open both eyes with limited success.
It comes to me that I am in the recovery area.
My first goal is to make sure I have no facial paralysis. The one risk that I am made perfectly clear of, and sign papers accepting this risk.
Lips, eyes, cheeks all move as before.
I place my hand on head and feel the familiar huge turban bandage.
Pain decreases as morphine works into my blood stream.
I am in my silent world again.

I can make out three digital clocks in recovery areas in front of me. I attempt to figure out military time in my state. They all say sixteen something, but in my hazy post operation state I struggle with with the math. Do I subtract twenty four from the number or..?
Dazed and confused from surgery, drugs and pain.

I crane neck up to see what the recovery room offers to pass time and help mind alter from numbing pain, followed by warm drug, followed by ache again.

Nurse comes back and asks me to rate pain on a one to ten scale. I tell her eight. She gives me more morphine.

I deduce that I went in OR at one PM, and it is after four now. So depending on how long I have been "asleep" in recovery, the surgery took about the same time as last one just over 100 days ago.

I was to go in at 11:50 for surgery but traffic was heavy in the OR, and I did not get wheeled up to OR #13 until one in the afternoon.
I smiled because it was the same OR as last time. They call it 14a, but I counted them off last time: 11, 12, 14a, 14b, 15.
I understand that nobody wants 13. Same as airplane seats or floors in a hotel, but in fact 13 has been a lucky number for Janet and I for some time. As a kid my lucky number was 14. I was born on the 14th and my favorite hockey player was #14, so today, as last in last surgery, I get double lucky I tell myself.

In the OR I look for familiar faces.
New crew I suspect.
Door opens and Dr. Ned does his wave to me, making sure I see him as I am deaf without my left side implant turned on.
. It is his "touch" that humanizes the surgery in my mind. He wants to say "Hey buddy" before I go asleep. He will be scrubbing and mapping while his team preps me.

I try to see if I can figure out anesthetic. How it works, and if I can fight it for a second to see how one nods off.
IV goes in and I focus on the white board and try to read it. I read a name then another, next thing I know I am in recovery room and three and a half hours have passed.

They tell me I will go to my room as soon as my vitals are taken again. I know that Janet will be waiting and will have already have spoken to the surgeon from my last implant.
Dr. Ned will tell her all the particulars when they wheel me into recovery.

The morphine wears off quickly and they give me Tylenol 3's with water that I can't get into my dry mouth fast enough. Porter wheels me into a ward that houses many surgery patients, like myself that are in for a short stay. In my case one sleep over.

Pain is now a constant throb that is tolerable, but makes it known that some very intrusive cutting, drilling then stapling was done to my right skull.
Janet all morning had referred to it as "Pumpkin carving."
"I hope they use the same design as last time when they carve your pumpkin up today" she graphically states.
All I can vision is the seeds splattered all over newspaper and the flesh all stringy and wet.
Nice!

Wheeled into my "room" which houses a lot of folks I suspect, although all have the drapes around them. So no idea of what we have as roomies tonight.

Janet finds her way to me and sits.
She of course asks how I am and how I felt it went.
I feel so much better seeing her and tell her so.

She tells me the scare she had when she fell asleep in the waiting room only to wake up to see Dr. Ned, my surgeon walk in.
He walked in calls her name. Janet jumps up and he takes her into a room and closes a door.
Now put yourself in her position. What do you expect to hear?
My surgeon explains to her what went on for him and his team.

"Dr. Ned told me he could only fit 11 electrodes in your head" she tells me.
"What"? I am stunned.
"Maybe your brain is too small for all these computers they put in your head"

I am not laughing,
I am shocked that all the pain is a result of a surgery to put 16 electrodes in my head, but finds room for only 11!
But reason that 11 will be ok. It has to be ok. Nothing can be done now.
Advanced Bionics makes these implants to work even with less than 11 electrodes fire up.

The reason for this surgery was because my left side had 5 of the 16 electrodes shut down. There was a membrane of some sort blocking their effectiveness in my inner ear. I was down to eleven electrodes so they decided to put another Cochlear Implant in my right side.
I told them to put up a road sign warning "Danger, watch for failing electrodes" in the Hippocampus cortex roadside attraction area of my cerebral cortex.

When the surgeon and team went in yesterday there was some ossification( bone hardening) that they had to do some heavy duty drilling to even get eleven of the sixteen electrodes in.
I was stunned but pragmatic.
"Hey eleven is better than none, right" Janet agrees.

Eleven months ago I was in a coma on life support and woke up deaf.
Today I have, through the marvel of technology, the ability to hear my son laugh, my wife say I love you.
In a month they will fire up the right side and I will hear Dan, Janet and Speeder in "Perfect Eleven" stereo. I will be bilateral.

Yes the Advanced Bionics computer is designed to have 16 electrodes from which it can direct current to fire from. And I will use eleven of those on each side.

I told my surgeon I wanted perfect symmetry if I could. I wanted the magnets to line up on the same side, I wanted them the same colour.
What I didn't expect was the same number of working electrodes.
Be careful what you wish for huh?

Glass is always half full my friends.
Oceans 11 was better than 12
My Son wants a guitar amp that has the dials go to eleven. Why? Because 11 is better than 10
A perfect ten is not as good as eleven.
If you add both sides up I have 22 electrodes.
Eleven is what I got to work with, and damn it I am going to have the best hearing for a guy who happens to be short ten crayons out of my 32 box.
Eleven rocks baby!
Watch me!

My life is blessed quite frankly and I am grateful for what I have.
If all eleven electrodes kick it, and kick it good, I will add the unknown element of tenacity and determination.

Forget lucky thirteen, Elevens are it baby!

Warmly, David