Badder Than Better

I have bilateral cochlear implants. One is my good CI, implanted in 1996. The other is my bad CI, which found its way to my right cochlea three years ago. In relatively quiet places one to one, I hear quite well with the good CI; with the bad one I’m lucky to make out “Daddy!” face to face in a soundproof booth.

My friend Patrick likes to put a positive spin on my CI situation, calling the 1996 model my “better” CI. But I’m more absolute: one of my CI’s is good and the other one is bad. I mean, we have two dogs in our family, a black/tan one that poops in the house and a chestnut/white one that was declared housetrained years ago. When Mr. Chestnut comes at me wagging his tail I don’t say “Better dog, better dog.” Likewise, when Mr. Black gifts me in the dining room, there is no way around the word “BAD.” So it is with my CI’s: the good one is well-trained and the bad one still poops, and very likely always will.

Anyway, I recently attended the annual conference of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA) in Colorado Springs. ALDAcon is a love-in where people who hear badly have a remarkably good time. They do karaoke, snake dances, and other uncustomary activities and forget to be embarrassed.

Two days before the conference my good implant stopped functioning. I’m still not sure why. I had tried my best to protect it from moisture and dog drool, and our cat hadn’t batted one around in years. The good CI just up and died. I prayed for its resurrection, but when I lifted it one last time from its Dry-Aid crypt before leaving for the airport it was still lifeless.

That left me with only my bad CI for the trip to Colorado. Under the circumstances, there was no better place for me than ALDAcon. A good many ALDAns communicate badly, and others communicate worse. I wasn’t quite in the latter category because I understand slow-moving sign language (as opposed to the machine-gun form deployed by most interpreters). Nevertheless, minus my good implant, I found myself bluffing at the Con like a newbie to deafness, and tending to avoid people who couldn’t sign at all or signed too fast for me.

Eventually I put pride aside and asked people to write things down for me. And they did so, without rancor. Frankly, I understood those conversations better than many others I had using voice or sign language. It was kind of neat, actually. It evoked for me the earliest days of ALDA when Babel reigned supreme and the simple act of communicating with pencil and paper seemed so precious. I got a bit of that buzz from the paper pads at ALDAcon.

Which is not to say that I don’t want my good CI or its replacement online soon. I do. As soon as possible. Please. Because when all is said, signed, and written, I love it to death. The bad CI? Let’s just say it keeps me honest.