HH/Beck: Good Morning John. It's a pleasure to meet you. I should explain right from the start that you're in Ontario, Canada, and I'm in San Antonio, Texas. This interview is taking place over the telephone, and you're listening to me through your cochlear implant.
Why don't we start with a little information about your hearing history and any other information that you'd care to share?
Redden: I'm 52 years old and I'm a field service technician. I'm also a part-time musician. I've been a field service technician for the past 30 years. So I'm always out on the road meeting new people. I'm on the frontline with the customer all the time. I noticed that my hearing started to deteriorate when I was about 21. I was very interested in music back then, and I noticed that my treble control wasn't working so well anymore! But it turned out to be my ears - the guitar was fine! My hearing loss didn't effect anything as far as my daily functioning and living in the hearing world until the late 1980s and the early 1990s, then it started to become very difficult to communicate with people.
HH/Beck: Were both ears involved?
Redden: Yes. They were both going bad at about the same rate. It was almost like a gentle downward slope the whole time. But then, there was a time when I lost almost half of my remaining hearing in the space of one hour.
There was no explanation for it. My doctor couldn't explain anything, which made it even worse. They just can't give you answers. They have too many unknowns and they don't hesitate to tell you that. They make guesses, theories and that sort of thing but the bottom line is they say, There's nothing we can do for you.
HH/Beck: When did you start wearing hearing aids?
Redden: 1990.
HH/Beck: How did they work for you?
Redden: They were okay. I started with a standard analog hearing aid, and it did help. I was taking the hearing aid on and off according to the situation I was in. For instance, if I was in a car listening to the radio I didn't necessarily need hearing aids because I could really crank up the volume, but for conversation I would wear it. I finally listened to my audiologist and wore it more, and then finally became accustomed to it. But the whole time, from the first analog hearing aid to the last digital hearing aid, my hearing continued to get worse, so the audiologist was trying to hit a moving target. It was a challenge.
HH/Beck: I think you're right. I have fit many hearing aids on people with fluctuating hearing loss, and the keys are flexibility and patience! Imagine fitting glasses on someone with fluctuating vision - it's not the easiest task of the day, but it can be done, and it can be done very well. Did you take any additional training or classwork to help you cope with your hearing loss?
Redden: Yes. We have the Canadian Hearing Society, which helps all types of late deafened adults with learning to sign and that sort of thing. I went there for a course in dealing with hearing loss. It was Hearing Loss Coping Skills. I attended all four levels of classes over a two-year period to learn strategies and also speech reading skills. I quickly discovered that speech reading was not one of my skills! The main thing that helped me was the coping aspect of the class. When I go into a town where nobody knows me, I just say, Hi, my name is John and I have a hearing loss, but if you look at me and speak to me clearly I can probably understand most of what you're saying. It made my life so much easier at that point, and I thought I could get by that way. But fortunately, my wife kept asking my doctor, What can we do about John's hearing? And finally he steered me to the cochlear implant program in Toronto, and I guess that must've been 1999.
HH/Beck: Which cochlear implant did you get?
Redden: Clarion, by Advanced Bionics. The day I was finally hooked-up was just like a miracle. It was simply and truly a miracle. I will never forget that day as long as I live. What happened was I went in for my hook up and I was very nervous and my audiologist started doing the channel calibrations. Right away I knew something good was going to happen. Without even telling me, she went live and she was speaking to me. I was hearing all these wonderful notes. It was like.have you ever seen those 3D pictures where you gaze at them and then all of a sudden the image pops out?
HH/Beck: Yes.
Redden: That's what it was, only it wasn't visual, it was auditory. And then I said Oh my God - I can hear what she's saying. It was just amazing.
HH/Beck: So you were able to understand her voice the very first day?
Redden: Oh yes. Yes, within two minutes I was hearing her and the rep from Advanced Bionics was there because I was getting the first C2 in Canada.
HH/Beck: So then when you left the office, were you able to converse with people and understand them?
Redden: Yes. Although the sound I was getting was totally alien! It wasn't a normal sound like voices, but I could hear it, and I certainly understood it.
HH/Beck: I've heard that before. People say that on the first day the voices are very bizarre, they don't make a lot of sense but over a few weeks or about a month it comes into focus and it sounds normal.
Redden: It does sound pretty normal now. But in the beginning everybody sounded like Darth Vader to me -- even little kids. The normalization process is just incredible. But at this point, everything is quite normal sounding.
HH/Beck: Tell me about music. How does it sound to you?
Redden: Music is the Holy Grail with hearing devices. I remember when I walked out of the hospital I heard birds and I just about flipped because I hadn't heard a bird singing in decades -- the birds sounded so clear and sweet, just like I remembered them. But OK, back to regular music I am almost obsessed with music and I have thousands of CDs, now that I can hear again, I am way into music.
HH/Beck: Thousands? Woah - I thought I had a lot!
Redden: I've had records all my life. I'm taking all my old records and I'm converting them digitally onto CD's. Of course I'm also listening critically to the guitar again. I play a Telecaster and a Taylor.
HH/Beck: I play a Les Paul, but I like Telecasters. They weigh half as much as the Les Paul, and when you when you play them you don't need back support!
Redden: That's the other thing, with my implant, I can almost tell which kind of guitar is being played.
HH/Beck: That's pretty impressive! What's it like to go through your day wearing a cochlear implant?
Redden: Well let's see being without it would be like being in the middle of the ocean without a life jacket. Having it is absolutely my whole life. It's part of me. It makes me function. It puts me back in the hearing world. It puts me absolutely squarely back into the hearing world.
HH/Beck: What does your wife and family say about your hearing ability with the cochlear implant?
Redden: My wife is a very no nonsense lady. She is thrilled that I've got my hearing back. And frankly, she was not so thrilled when I went deaf, but most importantly, she did support me through the difficult times.
HH/Beck: Yes I can imagine. It must change the dynamics of your marriage and your family.
Redden: Oh for sure. In fact, since I've had my hearing back, many people tell me I'm like a whole different person, but they are the ones that knew me only when I had my hearing loss. What they are seeing now is the real person that I am. My old friends and family think they've gone back in time because the old John is back.
HH/Beck: Have you had any changes in your cochlear implant system in the last year or two?
Redden: I have the High Resolution CII system. I was using the standard SAS strategy in the beginning for a three month period initially, and I really liked it. When the opportunity came along to try the High Res I jumped at it because I wanted to see what the capability of this thing was since the C2 has quite a bit of expanded room in there for the future, so to speak. So I dove into that right away and it was even better.
HH/Beck: What was the difference in the sound?
Redden: I think the difference related a great deal to music. I could not play guitar with SAS -- no way. In fact, the first day, I could hear people talking to me and I could converse freely, easily. Birds were chirping. When I got home, I took the Gibson acoustic guitar out of the case and I thumbed it and I couldn't believe it, it was horrible. But at the time it didn't matter. Human voices and communication was number one. That's the most important thing a person wants is to hear voices, so I was happy with the implant, but not with the sound of the guitar! I put it back in the closet and forgot about it.
HH/Beck: And what happened when you switched to the High Resolution?
Redden: My audiologist is a very talented musician and he understood what I was after. He did some tweaking here and there, and he brought me in and we worked on the programming and over time, I started playing guitar again. It sounded a little off at first, but he got it to where it sounds great. It was not an instant thing, it was a gradual thing, but a wonderful thing. It got better and better, and I am really pleased with it.
HH/Beck: Thanks John. It's a pleasure to speak with you.
Redden: Thank you Doug. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you too.
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