I went...

...to my art group for the first time in a long while.

A bit apprehensive.

The acoustics of the room were so different from my experience yesterday. A bit confusing. I tried the scan, but too much distortion. I went to no scan setting on the remote, but still distortion.

So then I got the mini mic out and set that up and streamed the voice to the processor. That was somewhat better. But the sound was so different to yesterday. I was interacting with my friends, but relying so much on lipreading. Tiring. The sound I was receiving was nothing like yesterday.

But the thing that threw me the most was my own voice. I have not ever heard my own voice before, not even with the original cochlear mapping. I was only ever aware of the vibrations in my chest when I spoke.

In the acoustics of this room we were in I could hear my own voice after a fashion. Not actually what I said. This was disturbing. It got in the way of me speaking and I stumbled a few times, mixed up words and spoke gobbledegook.

In all my life of profound deafness I have always been able to speak perfectly and modulate my voice more or less correctly to the surroundings. Today I couldn't, because I could hear myself speaking, and speech stumbled more than I can ever remember. This is so scary.

The others said I was doing okay. They did notice that my voice had dropped a level, was quieter, but said it was still perfectly pitched for them.

I noticed that because I didn't pitch my voice at its usual level (but at a lower level because I could hear the fact I was speaking) that I wasn't getting the feedback from the vibrations in my chest. This threw me totally. And there is not enough sound information from my voice that I can hear to usefully do anything with. I don't know what to do. I am not jeopardising my speaking voice for this. I am confused.

At home now, I am speaking to myself just to test, but the acoustics here are such that I cannot hear my own voice not in any room, nor in the garden. I can just modulate it by vibrations like I always have.

I am assuming it was the acoustics of the room where my art group meet that caused me to hear my own voice? It must be because I cannot hear my own voice now at home. Also in the full month since this remapping I have not once heard my own voice in any situation.

It is an unnerving thing to hear your own voice as you speak when you have never heard it before in your 60 odd years of existence. So scary.

This painting I did at art. Someone lent me a picture and I used a pen and watercolour brushes and a water mister. So this is my pic today for my challenge to myself of a pic a day in 2017.