Recognizing music and sounds more clearly!!

I know I am jumping ahead of my chronological order of events with my blogs, but I couldn't help to interject here with a present experience that I am having.

I'm sitting at the coffee shop, Wild Cherries in Truckee, enjoying a latte', working on some emails and prepping for the classes I teach.  I must  mention that last night when I was in bed, I started playing around with my remote control to see how much I could manipulate the sounds I could hear. Since I happened to be in a quiet room while I was fiddling around with the remote, I could not notice much variety in the sounds I was listening to.  Now that I am sitting in the coffee shop, there is so much noise, so I am sitting here and LISTENING to the cacophony of sounds coming at me from every direction.  I tune in to the music that is playing over the speakers and I'm grinning from ear to ear because I KNOW what CD is being played-one of my all time favorites-Thievery Corporation.  I have this CD at home (somewhere).

What's so cool about this moment is that usually when I am with friends in a coffee shop, or out and about somewhere, I can see them doing a little dancing-to-the-beat motion whenever there is music playing. Who ever I am hanging out with always ends up asking  me if I can hear what song is playing. In the past, all I could detect was a VERY low jumble of bass and instruments, and if I was lucky enough by straining my concentration on the music hard enough, I could make out a song I was familiar with now and then.

I'm PSYCHED that I can hear the music at volume I never was able to hear before. When I put on the processor this morning, I had it set to program 2. volume 5.  But now that I am in a super noisy environment, I wanted to push myself and see if I could tolerate higher volume. And now, all the people who are talking around me in the shop sound so cartoonish to me. My right ear feels like it is flaring at each sound wave that hits my transmitted and travels into my cochlea. I'm experiencing some discomfort and my headache is coming back on, but it's so worth it to be able to HEAR the music in a way I never have before.

If you know me well enough, then you would know that one of my unique talents is my ability to read lips.  But today, I am forcing myself not to zone in on people's mouth's from across the room (and eavesdrop on their conversations) and instead I am trying to make out individual words that people are saying. Not quiet there yet-but I do hear snatches of specific words from a few tables over, as well as the dishes clattering in the kitchen area, people's coffee mugs hitting the surface of the table, and the rustling of the pages turning while a newspaper is being read. It's not so horrible sounding anymore, just uncomfortable and listening to the sounds is bringing back my headache. Ugh...

Since my 2nd mapping (which I will go back and write about at another time), I have been experiencing headaches everyday.  Migraine medications like Imitrix don't work for me, unfortunately.  It's come down to having to go to my primary doctor and getting a shot of tramadol to help reduce the inflammation.That seems to do the trick (and lots of ice on my head when I am in bed at night).

I have been reading other blogs from other people who have had the implant surgery and it seems that this is a common side effect since my brain is being overstimulated from all the new sounds I am hearing.  If any of you readers have any good suggestions on how to best alleviate migraines, then I would love to hear it.

Until next time.....More writing to come....I just got a bit inspired by the music today! :-)