Scents & Scentsibilities

My cochlear implants were activated on August 20 to great success!  I was able to hear sound, although initially everything just sounded like high-pitched buzzing.  It was almost impossible to describe.  Every time there was a sound, it sounded like buzzing.  The volumes were set so it wasn’t too overwhelming, and I was on my way!

That first day was mostly spent trying to identify the sounds I was hearing.  Within just a few hours, the buzzing was turning into actual sounds as my brain learned how to interpret the data coming from the electrodes in each cochlea.  Voices sounded very robotic and distorted but I could hear them.  I couldn’t understand anything without lipreading though.

I go once a week for “mapping”, which means that I get connected to a computer and new software strategies are sent to my processors.  Right now I’m mainly getting more volume — I have been for one mapping since my intial activation.  My speech recognition has improved quite a lot with the newest mapping, which is amazing to me!  I can hear my cats meowing and purring, all kinds of sounds in the environment, our dog barking, even crickets outside!

Certain things are still impossible for me to understand (the telephone) or difficult (the TV).  Music doesn’t sound very good right now, although I do catch the beat of the song.

I practice with aural rehab programs, listening to words and trying to identify what I’m hearing.  It’s really quite fascinating!

I can honestly say that this technology is like an absolute miracle.  When I lost all of my hearing, I never dreamed that someday I would hear once again.  What a blessing!

Thank you to everyone who wrote with well wishes — I can’t tell you how much it means to me.  I appreciate your patience while we had to close temporarily for my surgery, recovery and then activation.  From here on in, things should proceed pretty much as normal (I hope)!

Well, it was nice while it lasted! We’ve had to phase out all of the frosted jars from our Contemporary line, since the supplier we purchased from has closed down. We found a new supplier for the Metro jar (which we really do love) but it was only one size, in clear glass instead of frosted. We switched and now that supplier is also no longer carrying those jars. We only have 2 left in stock at this point and once they’re gone we’ll be down to only three types of jars in the Contemporary line.

For some reason it’s just very difficult to find the fancier glassware at affordable prices. Even the straight sided jars in our Economy line have been elusive at times; we’ve had to switch suppliers a couple of different times to keep those in stock as well.

I’ve been moving the jars over to the Limited Time Offers page when we get down to the last one, so you can check there to see if we have any special jars available.

I just wanted to explain why the jar selection has been dwindling … if it were up to us, we’d still have all the frosted jars available! I’m always on the lookout for new suppliers and pretty jar styles, so hopefully we’ll be able to fill that section out again soon.

In other news, my post-op visit today went well and I’m cleared for normal duties again. Yay! We’ll be closing from August 20-22, just a few days, since I’ll be getting my cochlear implants activated on August 20 (that will take up 5 hours of our day, between travel time to and from the doctor and the 3 hour visit) and then we are moving Eric to college the next day. As always though, we’ll be accepting orders during that time and we’ll start processing them on August 25. After that I don’t anticipate any closings until December, for the holidays.

Here’s a photo of Dave and I, on the way to the hospital on July 22:

I don’t normally wear glasses, but that day I had to go without makeup and contact lenses.

I think that’s everything for now — have a great weekend, everyone!