Hearing is the easy part

When you have a cochlear implant, or a hearing aid on, it's easy to hear. Hearing requires no effort on your part. But understanding and comprehending speech is a whole another game. And I'm starting to have fun with it.

A portion of today's appointment with my speech pathologist went like this:

"Okay, what we're going to work on is your voiceless consonant recognition within sentences. I will read you some common questions and you repeat them back to me, if you can. Or just tell me what you heard, and I will compare it with the actual sentence. You ready?"

"Okay, ready."

She covers her mouth with a circular plate large enough to hide the movement of her upper cheeks, so there would be no way I could look at her face and guess what she was saying other than hearing the words.

"knnn-mmm-hhhhuummt-mmnrrr"

"Give you some money?"

"Nope. I said 'Can you help me?'"

"Oh", I said sheepishly.

"Okay, next... wwwerrr-izzz-ysseee"

"Where is she?"

"Close. 'Where is he?' Okay, next... uuennn-yuulll-keemmm-urm-rrllluummm"

"Uhhhh..... repeat that?"

"uuennn-yuulll-keemmm-urm-rrllluummm"

My mind went blank, so I tossed out a wild guess. "The cat set the house on fire?"

She shook her head. "'When will you clean your room?' OK, I'll give you a shorter one... hhoowww-mmutssh-izzzddisss"

My back involuntarily straightened up and I blurted out "How much is this!"

She smiles and nods. "One more. wwwuuhhtidd-yuhhgitt-ferrr-kwisstt-muhhsss"

"Uhhhh... I'm not totally sure, but I think I got it... did you say 'What did you get for Christmas?'"

She brightens up. "Yes! You got it! You are doing better than the last time you were here. Keep up the good work and make sure you do your listening exercises every day."

That about sums up the last two weeks or so. Hearing is indeed the easy part. Speech comprehension, especially for a person who was born deaf like me, takes work. The first and foremost thing to remember is to have fun with this. It's difficult, alright, and that's exactly why you gotta make it fun to make it worthwhile.