One week from tomorrow, I’ll be at Hearts for Hearing in Oklahoma City for my activation day! In the last couple of days, I have been creating a list of music-related words for part of my aural rehabilitation work. I also downloaded the rehabilitation resources from the Cochlear Americas web page. I was correct in my assumption that the typical word recognition lists do not focus much on music; in fact, I’d say they don’t provide any musical terms whatsoever.
The list I have created includes about 375 words, categorized into seven groups: one syllable; two syllables; and so on, up to six syllables (I’ve only thought of one six-syllable word for that category: recapitulation). The seventh category is names of favorite composers. Last evening, I took time to add some ‘comparison’ exercises, asking the reader to say two words, then repeat just one of them, so I can say which one I think was repeated. I tried to find words that may sound alike, for example, gong and song, or lento and tempo.
Surgery was three weeks ago, or nearly so. By now, the incision is no longer sensitive and has healed completely. The tinnitus continues as previously described, mildly intense most of the time and centered in the implanted ear.
A member of one of the Facebook CI support groups I belong to responded to one of my posts, and included a link to a web page he’s created of his own CI experiences. As I read through some of his posts, I learned that the ‘hissing’ sound we sometimes hear from certain voices when they say words that include the letter S is called ‘sibalance.’ He also indicated that he listened to Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra as part of his musical rehabilitation. I plan to do the same! He is a bilateral CI user from Hout Bay, West Cape, South Africa; his web site is Get an Earful (https://pdkknight.editorx.io/getanearful). He’s created a couple of ear-training apps and offered to add my list of musical terms to one of them. His web site includes links to some useful resources.
P.S. I added a 7-syllable word: pianissinissimo. ppp
