Thank you everyone for your kind messages.
@ianpspurs @jjraak @dunelm @DJC3 @PenguinMum @Muddy Cyclist @HarryBeau @SaskiaKC
I hope I have not missed anyone out.
@HarryBeau I am very sorry about Lola, and now the eventual outcome of the litter and mother. From what you say they all have feline enteritis which is very contagious, and it can sweep through the shelter. I used to take in cats and kittens when the local cat shelter was full in the 1980’s, 25 cats and their kittens at one point of time. That is when I came across feline enteritis. But I never lost a cat or a kitten through it. However those that had it (which is why they got dumped on me and I didn’t know it at the time) did need intensive 24 hour care from me, and frequent injections from the vet (who was convinced they wouldn’t pull through, but they did). The shelter cannot deal with that kind of outbreak. There is not the staff for individual care in a contagious outbreak. You will get your kittens or young cats, but my own personal view (and experience) says maybe look elsewhere now. I hope you don’t mind me saying all this. Hugs for you. It is incredibly upsetting.
@SaskiaKC Thank you for your concern. I will send you a message later today with my email address. And you may email anytime and on anything. When something happens to a site there is the sudden vulnerability that comes with it, and possible loss of connections.
When I was researching for a new phone (because the iPhone is now useless, and for too long), I found this might be happening a lot what you say that your cell service requires you to buy a new phone this year because of upgraded services. Apple are upgrading their services/technology (although my problem with the Cochlear stuff is separate to this issue), and this means that older iPhones (with SIM cards) will not be able to work or connect to any Apple services and therefore will be useless. All this I think is part and parcel of developing technologies. But it exposes a consumer vulnerability that we need these services, and it feels like they can hold us to ransom because we have to buy the latest (inflated price) phone. We don’t have a choice.
Like I said in my post yesterday I will be off this thread for a bit and explained why. I don’t have the energy in my brain to read your posts like I normally do (and love doing) each morning, because I need to concentrate this energies elsewhere which I will explain below. I popped in this morning to see how you were. And to reply.
My energies need to be elsewhere at the moment. It is hard to explain briefly why. But I will try. I have been on online forums (other than Apple’s forum) about this Apple update affecting Cochlear Implant users. And I have been trying to explain to the forum my problems. But just about all of them are hearing aid users. They had a similar connectivity via an app on their iPhones.
However, they are spitting furious because there was a new Apple update on this issue (I think it was yesterday and I will update today), and this direct alert sounds into my neural pathways which frightened the living daylights out of me because it was so powerful, have now been removed. At least so I understand from the forum.
Hearing Aid users apparently liked these sound alerts and are now campaigning for them to be put back on. I tried to explain on the forum how it affected me as a Cochlear Implant user and how bad it was. But I was like an ant in front of an oncoming steam roller...I literally got blasted. I was upset. But after a night’s sleep I realised I needed to explain a bit differently. You can get a bit defensive when you get attacked online.
Hearing aid users all have a working cochlear or else they wouldn’t be hearing aid users. So alerts for them direct to their hearing aids are pretty much similar to alerts hearing people hear from their phones.
But I do not have a normal cochlear. I have wires in my head which convey sounds and noise directly to my neural pathways. And these noises and sounds are carefully regulated by the mapping I receive. So I am talking now about normal sounds (although I don’t hear them anything like hearing people), but these alerts and phone ringing directly into my skull as a result of the Apple update were not regulated by my mapping and were at dangerous sound levels, causing my brain to freeze on whatever I was doing at the time because it had no idea what was happening.
I was actually parking my car when the phone rang in my skull for the first time after this Apple update (my iPhone was set before the update never to ring because I cannot hear to take a phone call, yet the Apple update bypassed that and put the phone ringing directly into my neural pathways at the loudness as if I were in Big Ben Bells chiming midnight). My brain froze, my foot froze on the brake pedal, my brain is unable to compute. My car, which is a big heavy car, goes into the brick wall in front of me. The brick wall was fine, but not the front of my car.
So obviously insurance, getting car repaired, driving a courtesy car (completely different), trying to get my confidence back (which had taken a hell of a knock), and furious because I have been driving a car since I was 17 years old and never once had an accident. So, I have been trying to be ‘normal’ with my posts on here, because I would have written a book if I had started saying everything what was happening these last few weeks.
I have a meeting with other Cochlear Implantees next week, all who have the Nucleus 7 Processor, and an audiologist, and I will be presenting what this reprehensible update from Apple caused me as a Cochlear Implant user. My mind/brain (for the next few days) needs to be totally on what I need to to present and how best to explain it.
So I will be back on the forum I spoke about earlier, because I can now verbalise (just like I am trying to explain to you here) in no uncertain terms how this affects a cochlear Implant user as opposed to a hearing aid user.
I am probably on the slightly aggressive end of assertive at the moment. What if I had been driving on a motorway and that telephone ringing had gone off unexpectedly in my skull? A pile up? Me dead? Others dead? And I wouldn’t have been able to explain what happened. Actually I am still furious.
My new Android phone I have configured to give me NO sound alerts at all via my Processor. It is configured to only give vibrate alerts which I can only feel if it is on my person, which it is not when I am in the car. So, obviously in the car the phone is totally turned off (shut down), and also in a Faraday bag and in my bag on the car floor.
I am not taking any blood glucose readings until I have had my meeting next week. This is not an intentional experiment but it could be one. I will eat as I have been because my readings have been constant at a good level, and I don’t need to comfort eat, because my adrenaline is going on this. I cannot concentrate on any diabetes related matters at the moment.
I hope this helps you understand a little bit where I am at. At the end of the day as a Cochlear Implantee, I am a niche user of this hearing software within Apple, whereas the hearing aid community using the same software is vast and has the greatest voice and are over riding other groups. I need to make sure my voice, and the voice of Cochlear Implantees are heard - in the forums the world over - and I need a detailed description of how this affected a cochlear implant user, and I will be doing a one page précis for impact that I can hand out.
I apologise for writing a book here. I am just letting you know where I am with this.
So take care. I will peek in.