Before my accident, hearing well didn't mean anything special.

It was just something that happened on its own.

I didn't appreciate it.
I didn't think about it.
It was just there.

After the accident I lost my hearing.
And that's when I started to understand what it really means to hear.

It's been nine years since I got my first implant: a Nucleus 6.

Nine years hearing the world through that device.

Nine years getting used to a different way of listening.

This Wednesday I'm switching it for a Nucleus 8.

And for days I've been feeling something I didn't expect: excitement.

It's not the kind of excitement I can easily explain to someone who always heard well.

For most people, a Wednesday is just a Wednesday.

For me, this Wednesday
is different.

It's a new device.
It's new technology.
It's the possibility of hearing a little better than I've been hearing for almost a decade.

And that has me thinking about something I don't think about often:
everything I lost that night, and everything I gained afterward.

I lost the way I used to hear before.

I lost taking for granted something as simple as a conversation, a song, background noise.

But I also gained something else: the ability to get excited about something as small as a Wednesday.

Before the accident, I never would have gotten excited about a device.
About an upgrade.
About hearing "a little better."

Now I do.

And it's not that I didn't appreciate hearing before.
It's that I didn't know there was something to appreciate.

You don't value what you take for granted.
I didn't value hearing well because I never had to.
It just happened.

Now every improvement, no matter how small, feels huge.

I don't know exactly what's going to change on Wednesday.
I don't know if I'll notice the difference right away, or if it'll be something that settles in slowly, the way it happened with the Nucleus 6.

But I know I'll be there, waiting to hear the world a little differently.

And I know that excitement, the kind you feel waiting for something as simple as hearing better,
is also something the accident left me with.

I didn't ask for it.

I wouldn't have chosen it.

But there it is.