Wednesday's painting...

...I forgot to post this last night.

I was too tired. More problems with the processor. I had an appointment Wednesday. But it wasn't resolved. Long day.

Briefly my processor picks up things it shouldn't. Always has from the start. Various instances. I will give you a funny one.

J was alive, so this was 12 years ago. My first processor picked up something it shouldn't have. So if I were near an overhead phone line or under one, sometimes my speech processor would pick up the overhead transmission. It wasn't supposed to. Where I stand by my kitchen sink I was picking up a transmission of people talking. So, this is 12 years ago. This is also where the outside phone line meets my bungalow (although I do not have a landline installed in the bungalow because I cannot hear the phone).

I called John over when I was getting this (unauthorised ?) speech transmission into my processor, and he put his ear next to my speech processor when it was receiving the voices. 

He began laughing straight away. That was frustrating because he could actually tell (hear) what the words were, and I couldn't, because although my processor could receive the words, I couldn't tell/make out the actual words being used because even with the Cochlear Implant, my hearing is still bad and I cannot make out the words but maybe be able to pick up 'the' 'and' and a few more simple words but not whole conversation and so I cannot make sense of it with the Speech Processor/Cochlear Implant alone. (If I know the person and listen to them a lot, then I learn to pick up a lot more of their speech, but not with random strangers). If you can understand this. Because sometimes I can hear/follow more speech, but it depends on a whole variety of factors/environment issues.

Anyway, back to the phone call (from the overhead lines) I was picking up 12 years ago. John finally explained it was two of my neighbours talking on the phone, having a conversation they shouldn't have been having because they were married to other people. But he didn't give me the exact details. He said he was a gentleman...grrrr.

I couldn't look those neighbours in the eye again...I felt like I was the one with a guilty secret.

So back to the hospital 12 years ago. They said that shouldn't happen, but J was with me, and he explained that he had heard the conversation by pressing his ear against my processor. So finally 12 years ago they changed the frequency of the Speech Processor. But it did not solve the problem. It was there a lot in the early days, then became less frequent. But it has never gone away. It was still there every year. I have been back to the hospital many times on this,

Last year it was driving me mad what tit was picking up. An interference of sorts. (I do pick up the buzz and noise of overhead lighting in shops and more directly into the speech processor). But I was at home this time, and on the advice of someone (you know who you are if you read this, and thank you) downloaded an EMF app. When the interference in my Speech Processor happened, the EMF app reading spiked dramatically. This then gave me the information not to sit in a couple of places in my bungalow, and then I didn't have that problem in those places. I had to even shift my bed to the other side of the room. 

There is more to this. And it also happens outside the house. In a cafe I go to with a friend, she got puzzled why when we were talking, I would go blank for a second, she said. She thought there was something wrong with me. So I brought out the EMF app that was on the iPhone, the phone I had then, and put it on the table. I told her to look at it when she saw this blank look on my face. She did, and saw the reading spike dramatically. Where we were sitting, it happened every so many minutes (I don't know if it was precisely regular, but it was on a regularlyish basis). So, the face on me that she interpreted as blank, was me being momentarily startled/aware (whatever), of the interference in my Speech Processor. This was last year.

Anyway, on Tuesday, I was in a shop choosing kitchen roll. The shop lady was asking me which one I wanted. At that moment, my processor did a series of clicks and noises it does when it want to connect to something through Bluetooth. But my phone, now Android, was off, also Bluetooth was off. So it wasn't my phone. 

At this point my speech processor switched off from picking up the normal surrounding sound, and that went silent, but a few more clicks on my processor and I am picking up a conversation. It began "Just to let you know...", and it was directly into my skull. It startled me badly, because of the random unexpectedness of it. It was very very loud, and I am getting no input from my surroundings, and the lady, a Turkish assistant, who doesn't understand why I am not responding to her asking me which kitchen roll I wanted. Suddenly she is waving her hands in front of my face, and I am lipreading her totally, "Hello, is anyone home" she is saying. I don't know what my shocked face at this unexpected transmission of words into my skull looked like (but it must be that blank face that my friend described).. The Turkish lady thought I had gone doolally. But I managed to say quickly "Oh, I'm sorry, my hearing aid battery has gone" and I pointed to my Cochlear Speech Processor. That satisfied her she did not have a total imbecile on her hands. And the Speech Processor kept making a series of beeps and clicks while it was trying to get back to normal and still picking up odd garbled words of the transmission, it was connecting to if and disconnecting to it.  Once I left the shop, my speech processor returned to normal.

So, yesterday was telling the audiologist, as I've told them all the other times about this, and aI just got "Oh, its just a one off, it probably won't happen again". I did explain these "one off's' have been happening in one form or another the last 12 years.

Other people, in my group, have problems with their Cochlear Processors that they cannot explain, and the hospital appear not to be able to help them with.

So I was drop dead tired when I got home yesterday (Tuesday).i have a different medical appointment this morning. I need to get that over with...

He is my painting for today. Two. Top one mixed media paper. Bottom one on an index card. Watercolours.  I did a similar wet in wet wash on both. But when they dried, they suggested different paintings...