The Quail Trail Part 1

During the past ten years I travelled far and wide and dwas lucky an dhappy to meet so many wonderful people.Some re my travels and others aduring the visits or even afterwards. The single most important travel experience probably was my visit to the USA Canada and Britain in 2001. I wrote a number of stories after my return that was posted in “Online Voices the offical online magazine of Saywhatclub. I was rather surprised to see that they are still in the archives. However I want to repeat some here with photos added as a nice reminder of that wonderful journey. Enjoy and think back on the memoires that we share…

I wrote as follows…

I call my story the "Quail Trail". For those of you who don't know the story of the Quails... I call my CI buddies the Quails or Kwartels (Afrikaans for Quail) because we have an Afrikaans saying that goes (literally translated) "As deaf as a quail"...

I think it's time to start telling you a little about my experiences. It will for sure also help me to keep the lovely memories fresh and alive.

Before my departure everything went wrong and I had such a lot of problems to attend to that there was hardly time to get excited. But from the moment I started packing the excitement began. I arrived at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg completely exhausted and just a little concerned about the connecting flight in Zurich the next day. I met my friend Ruth at the airport and although we were departing at the same time she was flying first class via London with BA and I was booked on a flight with Swissair via Zurich to Newark.

Upon arriving at the Swissair desk I asked for assistance and the next moment a young lady arrived with a wheel chair!! I told her that although I was dead tired I could still manage to walk to the departure gate... In the meantime Ruth had taken matters in hand and with a little encouragement convinced the guy who was waiting to take her to the VIP departure lounge that she could not possibly wait for her flight to depart without me at her side LOL. He whisked us past the customs desk and we walked past the metal detectors to be wanded because neither of us was prepared to take off our CI's and scared to mess up our maps walking through the detectors.

Shortly after that we settled into comfy chairs in the VIP lounge, poured a Scotch to drink a toast on the problems we were leaving behind... Our adventure had begun and we were ready to have fun.

About an hour before departure time I said goodbye to Ruth and walked to the Swissair departure gate. On my way the friendly lady that offered the wheel chair walked past me and I then joined the long queue at the gate. The next moment the little lady came back and gestured to me to come with her and whisked me past all the other waiting passengers. She made me really feel like a VIP and made sure that the airhostesses knew that I wanted assistance in Zurich the next day.



The flight was not too bad but uncomfortable although I sat almost at the back on the aisle side to have room for my legs (those of you who've met me know I am tall). The bad part of this particular arrangement was that everyone wanting to use the plane toilet lined up in the passage next to my seat and that carried on for most of the night because the only toilets on the plane were at the back! I hardly slept at all but the food was GOOD!! The Swiss are known for the best hotel/chef's schools in the world. The lady next to me seemed to be more interested in the booze than in the food and drank about four beers before I managed to finish my meal and she again ordered some more during the night and at breakfast the next morning. Truly amazing because SHE never visited the toilet HAHAHA



Upon arrival in Zurich all I wanted was to get to a bathroom to freshen up and to sleep!! It was just after 8 in the morning and my connecting flight was due at 16:00 in the afternoon which meant I had a few hours to kill. After getting off the plane I was told to get on to one of those jeep-like vehicles. Since there were quite a few passengers also waiting to be escorted that obviously needed the ride more than me I offered to walk but the lady would not hear about it and sort of told me to get onto the darn cart and shut up.

Eventually we were taken almost to the other side of the airport and I then realised why she insisted that I get on the little cart. We were taken to the transit lounge and told to wait and make sure that we were there one hour before our connecting flights were departing. There were a lot of people in the transit lounge and almost all the chairs were occupied so I looked for a bathroom and took a walk through the duty free shops. That was nice and before I really knew what I was doing I bought a nice wristwatch!! All the Swiss chocolates in the shops were of course also very inviting but I decided NOT to buy some because Ruth had told me that her daughters specifically said NO Chocolates; I gathered they were perhaps dieting or at least very health conscious. Being a dietitian I decided I must at least make a good impression upon arrival in Newark - sort of showing that I practice what I preach although I was dying to buy loads of those chocolates. I thought that I had to go via Zurich a few more times I would buy the chocolates the next time I got to Zurich...never got the opportunity but did buy a very expensive tin of chocolates on the plane on my way back!

I went back to the transit lounge and by that time there were more empty seats and a number of people was stretched out on them sleeping Opposite me were a young very friendly Lebanese girl and her parents. She started talking to me and I immediately had to explain to her about my CI and the fact that I still had to lip-read. Then of course they all became very interested in my CI and it triggered off a nice conversation with me ending up telling them just how exhausted I was. Then the girl walked up to the desk and came back with two of those little cushions and blankets that one gets on the plane for her mother and me.

Without a care in the world I then stretched out on the chairs and was lost to the world for a few hours. The Lebanese people also had to wait for a connecting flight in the afternoon and the girl made sure that the Swissair people knew that we were sleeping and had to be alerted when it was time to get to the plane again. Afterwards I could not help smiling at how easily one does things like this when you know there is no one around that knows you!! In South Africa I would never dream of just lying down on a few seats at an airport!!



21 Rickland Drive, Randolph, NJ – Richard and Merle Blackman’s home.

By 3 o clock the afternoon I was ready to leave and a little less tired. Again the Swissair people assisted me very nicely and about eight hours after departing from Zurich I was welcomed in Newark by Ruth and her daughter and the kidlets. Ruth had arrived about three hours before me and had already dished out all the goodies that she bought from South Africa for the kids. By that time it was about 26 hours since I left South Africa! All I wanted was a nice hot bath and a bed!! Jet lag had set in with a vengeance and I could not be bothered about anything but to fall asleep!! America did not seem half as inviting as I expected it to be.
Fortunately I had experienced this with my previous trip and I knew that it would take a day or two before I would be ready to really start enjoying myself, getting interested in my surroundings

The miracle explained

This past week I had to explain some about audiogrammes in a community that I belong to on the Internet. In my search for information I decided to use some of my old audiogrammes that I kept since my hearing loss was diagnosed for the first time. For purposes of this blog I think it will be interesting to show them for the record too because it shows how little I could hear 20 plus years ago and what was restored with my implants. To me this looks like a wonderful way of looking at the miracle of cochlear implants.

For those of you not familiar with reading audiogrammes I also include something on how to read and interpret them. So let’s see what I lost and what I gained…
I will only summarise the main information and you can find more here:

http://www.audiologyawareness.com/hearinfo_audiogramread.asp

I will further explain the audiogram for sensorineural hearing loss with examples from my own audiograms.

An audiogram is a chart of a persons hearing ability. There are some different styles of audiograms, but most use a standard set of symbols for representing items on the chart.

The audiogram reads in frequency (pitch) indicated as Hz, across the top or horizontal axis and it reads in decibels (loudness) down the side or vertical axis. Just like a piano's keyboard, the pitches are low on the left side (125 or 250Hz), and then gradually climb to higher pitches on the right side (8000Hz). 0 dB is not the total absence of sound but merely the softest sound that a person with normal hearing can hear. Normal conversational speech is about 45 dB (also referred to as the hearing threshold).

(If you are not familiar with what happens during a hearing test – please refer to the link provided above)

Ranges of hearing loss for adults are as follows:




To understand an audiogram one should be familiar with the symbols used to read the audiogram. The legend for these are as follows:





An audiogram for a person with normal hearing (in the left ear) would look more or less like this:



To explain further I will use my own audiograms before and after my cochlear implants.

This is a scanned copy of my very first audiogram:




(Since the audiogram is now almost 30 years old I transferred the information to a new graph for this blog discussion).



This audiogram shows how my hearing dropped rapidly at a range of 1000 Hz and above for both ears resulting in a moderate to profound hearing loss for the right ear in the higher frequencies and also indicating a sensorineural hearing loss. My left ear was slightly better with less hearing loss in the high frequencies. Both ears show a severe loss in the normal speech range.

Ten years later the audiograms looked like this:



At this stage my hearing was beyond the normal range for the lower frequencies and way into the severe to profound range for the high frequencies.
Another ten years later brought me to the stage where I had my first cochlear implant.



As you can see I could only hear very soft sounds up to 250Hz between 30and 60 dB which meant that I could hardly hear anything and particularly not in the range for speech. Most of the high frequencies could not even be measured and my hearing was what is often referred to as “off the charts”. There was no doubt at all that I was a good candidate for a cochlear implant!

My hearing in the left ear was a wee bit better and did not deteriorate much further till 2005 when I had my second implant. After that the miracle was complete for me since I was back into the mild hearing loss range for both ears. This is what a hearing test revealed two years after my bilateral implant.



Since 2005 the miracle continues every day with my CI hearing getting better all the time. I came to realise how much the bilateral implants mean to me since I have been wearing only the latter implant now for about a month because my other processor is sent in for repairs. I miss hearing from both ears and think it is such a pity that we now have tot pay to hire a loaner processor. I refuse to do that!


I am just happy that I am one of the lucky few who have a second processor as backup. It is a shame that our processors have to be sent to England for repairs even if its just a small plastic part that is broken of – like the little piece of rubber that covers up the Freedom to prevent it from attracting moisture. For something as simple as this I have to wait more than two months before the processor is returned to me. The other one is already broken again too and when I receive the one that is in for repairs now I have to repeat the waiting part for another 8 to 10 weeks Sigh…

OK I did not really want to vent but the back-up service from Cochlear is beginning to suck…

At least I can hear and if need be I will also have the old 3G mapped for a further backup. What deters me from doing that is that it is expensive. Depending on a small pension for income makes me think twice before just having new maps done or hiring processors.

Mother’s Day and a Return to sound

This is the story of how I made a “right” turn when I came to a fork in the road on my journey back to the hearing world on Mother’s day 2004…

I was in a state of denial after my first bad experiences of not coping well with my first CI (a long story that I will come back to later on.) and I went for days without sound. Being alone at home and not having anyone to talk to I often did not even put on my CI. The only people I talked to apart from some here and there in the shops when it was absolutely necessary were the few CI friends that visited me.
One of them thought that I needed company and nagged me to tryout a dating site on the Internet. I was not at all interested but later on decided that I would give it try just to shut up this friend because I did not believe that anything good could come from it.

Well, a guy by the name of Kalie replied and wanted to meet me in person. I was hesitant but since Mother’s Day was around the corner I decided that it may be the ideal safe opportunity to meet this stranger. I would have my 93 year old mother with us for the day as well as my two young nephews. Anyone who could cope with them would be OK in my book.

Now you must have a little background about mother and the boys…
Mother was one of the most curious people I ever knew. She would ask questions of a complete stranger that would make me cringe. She seemed to have no way to evaluate the personal nature of her enquiries and just had in mind to learn as much as she could about any stranger. I think this is an inherited trait since my grandpa was just like that too. And maybe I am becoming so as well the older I get. I do however believe that I am a bit more sensitive for asking very personal questions of strangers though.

My two nephews were all fun and also not shy to play pranks and have fun. I reckoned that it would be a good test to see if this stranger can handle mother AND the two of them and pass their scrutiny.

I was a bit scared of course but the scene was set as Kalie arrived right on time at 10:00 that Mother’s Day morning. The boys kept to the background more or less but mother was immediately interested. I did not tell any of them much about Kalie apart from mentioning that I met him on the Internet. The Internet being something altogether alien to mother and the boys just chuckling about their “old” aunt getting involved with a man from a dating club. The one whistling the tune to a SA lyric called “Wat maak oom Kalie daar” (What is uncle Kalie doing there?” LOL)

Well much to my surprise (and theirs I think) Kalie was unperturbed and immediately sat down talking to mother and answering all her questions! NO problem whatsoever and it actually appeared as if he enjoyed it! Later on he was tending to the barbeque with the boys as if everything – the house included – belonged to him! Bossing them around to help with the fire and the barbeque! I could not believe that we only met him that morning since he was so “at home” with us. At 11pm that evening he started making plans to go home and wanted to know when he could visit again…
From there on things developed quickly and we ended up as friends and soul mated within a few months and after about six months he moved in with me.

From that moment onwards sound returned to my life. I suddenly had someone to talk to all the time. More than that he came with his love for traditional Afrikaans music called Boeremusiek. The radio was on all the time and I had to accompany him to gigs and Boeremusiek events. I joined the local Boeremusiek Guild and met the most famous musicians and started sharing Kalie’s interest in the history, development and preserving of this music genre.



Without noticing it at first my hearing benefitted by this new exposure to sound. Within three months I could hear so much better and it was only then that I finally believed that one had to “train your brain” to get used to electronic sounds…

So Mother’s Day was the day that I took a new road in the journey back to the hearing world. More than that however it brought Kalie into Mother’s life. Looking back at it today that was the best Mother’s Day gift that we could ever pass on to her. He was the one that made sure that I do not neglect her and visited often. He also was the one who took care of things when she was unable to communicate with anyone but him after a stroke caused by severe stress (what we believe to this day was due to ill treatment in a nursing home).

Kalie was also the last one to communicate with her when no one than him would evoke a response from her a day before she passed away...

I never had children and strictly speaking no need to celebrate Mother’s Day in the normal sense of the word. I have only been a “surrogate” mother to my siblings’ kids and Kalie’s children and they do not owe me any Mother’s Day greetings or recognition and that is right and OK

However - tomorrow Kalie and I will celebrate our fifth anniversary but more so we will remember Mother’s Day and Ouma and my return to sound…and Mother’s Day will forever make it easy to remember exactly when we met!

Enjoy the day! Even if you think about it as just another commercialized silly holiday – it means different things to different people and I hope that my story brought a smile to some of you.


In the photo:
Kalie and his Boeremusiek friends at a gig that he arranged with them for mother and her cronies at the Old Age home for her 92nd birthday.

My First Hook-up

Today I cannot remember much of that first hook-up except that it was a bad and disappointing experience.

My hook-up was on the 29th of November. My sister Hester accompanied me and we took the usual cakes etc. to celebrate the occasion but my heart was not really in it! All I wanted was to start hearing again and I had high hopes that I would return home and hear Hennie once again. The moment of hook-up was one of the most disappointing experiences of my whole life!! All white noise!! I just put on a show for everyone present. Smiling, trying to laugh and pretending that I was pleased with what was supposed to be my "new" hearing! I even kept up the pretence after getting home since I was so scared that Hennie would say: "I told you it was not going to work!!" Instead he just said: "You expected too much! You must be patient, it will get better!! Now open your presents!!"


The next was discovering that the processor was faulty. In hindsight this was a blessing in disguise because my processor was returned to cochlear and I was fitted with a Sprint body processor and all sounded more like speech. This made it possible for me to hear Hennie’s last words, to follow word for word during his funeral a week later and to have quite a wonderful CI moment hearing the birds the morning after his death... I am not going to repeat those much told stories here but you can read about them again on my home page if you want to.

For the rest the hook-up photos will tell the story. In those days I was not so obsessed with photos but fortunately I had quite a few taken and today they are part of the memories and this life-changing experience.

My wonderful sister was at my side once again for hook-up! She travelled all the way from their small town Coligny – more than a 2 hour drive to be with me. See how good we looked a mere ten years ago LOL




Esti did the hook-up as shown by the following photos:

Esti explaining what its all about and showing me how to use the tiny switches etc.

My first try at putting on my new “ear” As you can see I was not yet comfortable with doing this LOL Today I don’t even think of it and just use one hand to plonk them onto my ear(s) and off I go.






My absolute astonishment at the moment of hook-up! It seems as if Esti and the other audiologist (I cannot remember her name and she was not one of the team but attended out of curios ity) was really thinking that it was a wonderful experience for me NOT!!





More (awful) new sounds and me trying to explain to Esti what I heard. You can see she is a bit more concerned than in the previous photo LOL Elna looking on.





Esti, me, Elna and Ronel with her then still very tiny baby. (Today this kid is almost a teenager…and has a little sister too – beautiful children)

My sister with Elna and Esti – All of them all smiles believing that they attended the most wonderful day of my life. Today I can smile about this…








Hester with the cake to celebrate – at least the cakes and tea were good.