I've always been somewhat conscious of phonemes. Not to the same degree, I'm sure, as someone who learned spoken English through speech therapy, but certainly more than hearing people.

I'd been a bit concerned about the phonology aspects of my linguistics class. For all my implant has made incredible improvements in my hearing, and for all my abilities to communicate regardless of whether I can distinguish a [t] from a [k], I still have a lot of trouble distinguishing phonemes in isolation. Particularly vowels. (Although to be fair, some of that is normal - distinguishing a schwa from another vowel is hard for anyone.) And there has been one assignment already that we've had to change, which was fine with the professor.

But today in recitation, it struck me that I have a very solid grasp of how phonemes fit into the bigger picture. Between growing up lip reading, the conversations I've had (professional and just curious) with my audiologists and the two speech therapists I've worked with, and my admittedly limited cued speech, I've been exposed to a lot of these things on an informal level. The McGurk Effect? Wait, you mean hearing people have a name for that? (Grandma Wentworth: Drama? They teach that?) (Seriously, that was the first time I noticed this. The confusion of my hearing classmates when they experienced it for the first time was hilarious.) The idea that people with what seems like the same accent actually have subtle dialectal differences, or that an individual will speak the same word with different phonemes at different times? No problem. Distinguishing method of production, and placement? Also easy - on paper, anyway. In running speech, well, that's a different story.

It actually reminds me quite a bit of my first cued speech class. The deaf/HOH population figured out the lip reading quickly. Those of us who'd acquired English the usual way had a bit of trouble with things like the /s/ /z/ distinction, but the others really didn't. The hearing population, on the other hand, had a hell of a time figuring out "this whole lip reading thing", and that was a major hangup they had to deal with before they could even start paying attention to the cues.

Y'all may be better at it than us in practice. But for exactly that reason, we've got you beat on a theoretical level. ;-)

This post will start out as your generic "stupid healthcare tricks" story, but there' a happy ending, really. So, my scooter is broken. On the bright side, I should have my parts tomorrow morning, and the repair dude said he'd come out tomorrow afternoon or evening, so I should be back in action in time for class on Wednesday. Today being a random holiday, that leaves only one day of classes I need to get to. (I have one class tonight, but it's in a small building that I'd be taking a taxi to anyway, so it's totally crutchable.)

I figured I'd contact student health and see what they could loan me - they've got to at least have manual chairs for when students break their legs and whatnot, yes? Even if they insist you rent your own from elsewhere, I can't imagine they wouldn't have a few that you could take back to your dorm while you're getting a rental. So I went to Urgent Care and asked. "We don't do wheelchair loans." Gee, how'd I guess you were going to say that? It finally came out that their hangup was that I wasn't injured. I pointed out that I had indeed broken my legs on Friday; it's just that my legs are plastic and motorized, rather than squishy and organic, my crutches notwithstanding.

The receptionist at Urgent Care was not that amused, but she did put me in touch with a patient care advocate. I'd never met this woman before, but I realized later that we'd emailed several times during my freshman year. Anyway, she was immediately willing to hunt down a wheelchair. She was apologetic - the only one they had in the inpatient wing was a large hospital wheelchair. Which was fine with me - I hadn't expected anything really nice or day-to-day ish (seriously, the day hospitals start stocking Quickie ultra-lights, I will be pleasantly shocked). She did some looking around, but I guess their wheelchairs have a tendency to walk off. Still, I'll need someone to push me to class anyway, so a self-propellable chair would be a convenience, not a necessity.

But. Here's the part that really impressed me and made me happy. They're going to treat this like any situation where they need a supply for a procedure that's normally covered by student insurance, but the supplies on hand aren't appropriate. They've contacted a local rental company, and I'll be picking up a pediatric-sized chair later this afternoon. Covered by my student insurance, even. How awesome is that? It remains to be seen how self-propelling I'll be able to be, and I'll still need help getting to campus, if not between classes, but either way it'll be much more comfortable.

(Okay, okay, I'm still fantasizing about a basketball wheelchair, because those things are so incredibly fun to ride. But, within the realm of actual reality, this is about as good as it gets.)

I'm sort of thinking about maybe getting a new scooter. Depends on whether I can get insurance to partially cover it. Basically, I need a backup for situations like now when mine is kaput. It'd also be nice to have something that's a bit more robust, especially in light snow. My Amigo RT has almost smoothish tires and not much ground clearance, so it wimps out pretty easily in situations where traction is necessary.

I know there are at least a few scooter and powerchair users who read this - what do y'all use? How's the workmanship and build quality? Does it handle okay in light (less than 1 inch/3 cm) snow? (Positive and negative recommendations are both welcome - "use this" may be a very valuable recommendation, but "stay the hell away from that" is useful too).

It seems like my wheelchair's breakdowns always happen on a Friday afternoon - when it's too late to get the part I need shipped out until Monday. And when the scooter rental companies aren't delivering anymore for the weekend (although, given what they charge ... sweet holy crap. I think I'll just borrow a manual from Student Medical when they open on Monday, and try to find someone to push me.).

If the chair was a bit better designed - or if the workmanship was less haphazard - it might've been possible to take it apart and wire in a jury-rigged charger. More incentive for me to take the Power Lab next semester, I guess. Or maybe I should ask the professor if some of his students this semester would be interested in doing a case study? Hmm ...

On the bright side, no classes Monday, so I can (hopefully) get all of the logistics worked out before class on Tuesday, and the scooter should be fixed by Tuesday night. Wednesday night, if I'm unlucky. I just won't have it for my ASL class (or the nanotech workshop at the Museum of Science, whichever it is), but that's okay - I can still take The Ride and use my crutches once I'm there. I just hope Stephanie gets back to me soon about whether the ASL class is happening or if I need to transfer to a different level.

I was reading a discussion of abortion on the grounds of disability earlier this week, including the discomfort that many pro-choice people in the disabled community feel re: abortion due to prenatal testing results. In the original post was the following quote, which I thought was worth saving/sharing: "It is impossible to prepare a world for people who are not in it or of it."

It was a nice follow on to Blue/Kay/The Gimp Parade's post earlier this year about the lack of tolerance and acceptance of people with developmental and cognitive disabilities relative to people with physical disabilities, and the effect that institutionalization may have had on that.

I just sent in a consent form to be in a trial of the AAA PowerPak for my Harmony processor (essentially, the PowerPak replaces the processor's battery with a cable to a AAA battery in your pocket or clipped to your belt - it looks something like this, although that device is for the previous generation processor, and takes AA batteries). Should be interesting. I also sent in my resume - hopefully I can work for Advanced Bionics this summer.

In less positive news, resistors are driving me nuts. Who came up with the idea of coding resistivity as a set of colors that (a) are fairly close to each other, and (b) are in bands so tiny, even a slight color impairment makes them indistinguishable? My TAs' solution is just to plug random resistors into a multimeter until I find the one I want (since our lab kit has all its resistors lumped in one compartment), but that just seems silly. Grr.

I was looking at some of my implant-related records today while getting them together to bring to a new audiologist (now that I'm back at school) later this week, and I came across some really neat numbers.

During the pre-implant evaluation, we did CNC Word List testing with my left ear, my right ear, and both ears. With my hearing aids, I scored 44%, 16%, and 40%, respectively. No context or lip reading, obviously. Not great scores, but then, that's why I got the implant, right?

Here's the cool bit: we tested my right ear alone (with the implant) 3 weeks after activation. Those 3 weeks of practice, and the 4-5 therapy sessions during that time period, gave me a score of 48% - better than I had done even with my better ear!

Of course, that's not the whole story; I'm having a lot more trouble with background noise than I used to, and integrating my aid and my implant together is tricky. But given time, those problems should resolve, so this is an auspicious beginning.