Cyborg Ear, Cyborg I: A Memoir of Passage

August 8, 2001

Four days after the MRI, I see the developed images at the California Ear Institute. My physician points to one particular spot. "There's your cochlea."

And there it is! It looks exactly like a tiny snail shell, perfectly imaged in three dimensions. It is a beautifully compact little spiral, glowing bright white from the gadolinium injected into my arm to enhance its contrast against the bone surrounding it. I'm enchanted by how perfect it looks. I fall in love with it. It may not work so well, but that is my cochlea.

CI evaluation

In the morning I meet with Becky, who will be my audiologist. I have seen Becky only in passing before; in fact, I only got a clear idea of what she looked like when I saw her on Good Morning America about ten days ago. I am living in a slightly surreal universe, where I see my medical team on national TV a few days before our first appointments.

The hearing test is humiliating. During the speech discrimination tests, which consist of reading two-syllable words to see how many I can repeat accurately, I am acutely aware of how bad my left ear has become. I can hear only a vague rumble and am reduced to hesitantly guessing.

Exactly one month and one day ago, I would have scored 90 percent or better. Today, my score is zero.

Afterward, Becky shows me models of the implant components. The internal part turns out to be larger and heavier than I had expected. A cutaway version embedded in lucite shows the chip and its supporting electronics clearly. Hefting them both makes me realize that this is significant 'ware: this thing really is a computer.

While looking over the models, I realize with some amusement that Becky has not actually told me verbally that I passed the tests, that I am a candidate. Or rather, that I failed them resoundingly. It is just too obvious to mention. The man is deaf. Pass him the implant.

The rest of the visit is devoted to meeting with the surgeon. He patiently answers all my questions, and together we make several important decisions. Yes, I should do the left ear, because it had the best hearing before it collapsed. No, the ear is unlikely to come back and there is no point in putting off surgery. We agree on which implant to use.

A surgery date is set: September 6, 2001. The decision has been made. I will become a cyborg.

Abandoned In Place

Since my left ear failed, I have experienced transient episodes of vertigo. I don't get dizzy, precisely: I just lose my certainty that the floor is level, and I get very reluctant to do anything that requires moving my head through space.

After a while, a pattern in the vertigo becomes evident. It happens whenever my hearing is "loaded" – when a lot of sounds are stuffed into my ears. My own voice is the worst culprit, since it is both close and loud, from my perspective. After one long conversation, I shamble down the hallway keeping one hand on the wall, intending to sit down on the couch by the stairwell. I don't even get that far. I sit down with a thud just outside the the hallway, like some sort of absurd penitent. Two or three people pass by, and we all pretend that there is nothing out of the ordinary about a fellow sitting crosslegged in the hall, no sir. For a while I watch the water fountain opposite me to see if it will do anything water-fountainy, unprovoked. It does not. After about ten minutes I get up – it's a project, requiring both hands on knees for stabilization -- and shuffle twenty feet to the couch, where I lie down patiently for some more time. I have figured out by now that when I shut up, the dizziness goes away. It is like a subtle rebuke from the universe for having the nerve to open my mouth.

But there's something I haven't figured out yet. After a few more days, I suddenly get it. It only happens when I try to use my left ear, the one that failed. My right ear is just fine.

After that, I take my left hearing aid out of my ear, look at it for a while, and then carefully tuck the saddle-shaped thing into a small plastic box. With just a little bit of ceremony, I put it in my desk drawer and slide it shut.

As for the ear itself, there might as well be a yellow sticker on it, saying:

Abandoned In Place

Pending Reconstruction

I don't fear the physical risk and discomfort of surgery – in fact I look forward to it as a rite of passage. The fear I do feel is a dry intellectual terror. I would call it liminal fear (the word "liminal" comes from Latin, "threshold.") It is fear of becoming something new and strange. A person with implanted computers which play my auditory nerve like a piano. A person who can only hear with the aid of a computer. A bionic man. A cyborg.

I have always been closely associated with machines which augment and extend my capabilities, most notably computers and hearing aids, but this raises the involvement to a new level. Now the computer will be inside my body, woven into my flesh, in my head. Running do-loops in a language probably compiled from C++, updating an array of internal variables a hundred million times a second. Once I locked myself in the office bathroom and cried as I thought of getting a little plastic model of my inner ear and symbolically burying it in my garden. Saying goodbye to the organic ear I used to have, and preparing for its terrifyingly rational replacement.

© Copyright 2001 Mike Chorost. All rights reserved.

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