Many cochlear implant candidates are more concerned about music than speech.
When I learned about Nanette Florian’s passion for helping fellow cochlear implant recipients and those with hearing loss get the best out of music I knew I had to ask her to sit down for an interview.

She started playing the piano and singing when she was five years old.
She is a former member of The New Christy Minstrels, she was the standing bass and lead singer during her time with the group.
Eventually her hearing declined to the point where she stopped playing. That was until she received a cochlear implant 14 years ago.

Today her outreach is through her website Hear Music Again hearmusicagain.org
Along with her brother John, who also suffers with a hearing loss, they have two internet radio stations WHMA (Hear Music Again) and WHRA (Hear Rock Again). They are an eclectic mix of genres that were selected not only for the clarity but variety. There is a wide range of rock, blues, and funky soul as well as soft rock and country and classical music.
I will leave it to Nanette to tell her own remarkable story.

Transcript

Richard:
Cochlear implant basics as a site for candidates and their families and friends. If you have been told you qualify for a cochlear implant, these podcast interviews tell how receiving a cochlear implant can be a life changing experience. You will meet recipients who face a hearing loss and the hearing aids could no longer provide comprehension of speech or music. They face growing isolation, inability to socialize or compete in the world of business. The joy of music disappeared. They explained how receiving a cochlear implant changed their lives. Welcome to cochlear implant basics. A reminder cochlear implant basics is not sponsored by anyone nor is it offering medical advice. Please consult your own healthcare provider.

Richard:
We’re talking. So Nanette Florian, right now, I need to ask you your name, your location, and the day.

Nanette Florian:
My name is Nanette Florian. My location is Rhode Island on the ocean and the date is Tuesday, the 22nd of June.

Richard:
Thank you so much. I first like to start out asking you about the history of your hearing loss, how you discovered it, what steps you took. Tell me a little bit about your background.

Nanette Florian:
Okay. So my father, when I was growing up, he had very big hearing aids. And so he always said that it happened during the war. But I have two brothers and one of my other brothers and myself, when we turned about 19 or 20, we realized we had a hearing loss as well. So it wasn’t my father’s, you know, not bombs falling and everything. He had bad hearing when he went into the war and then his hearing got worse. So my brother and I started wearing hearing aids too. My two children have hearing aids. So obviously it runs in the family. So, when I was 19 or so I got a little in the ear hearing aid and as time went on, by the time I reached 40, oh, I had big hearing aids. And about 15 years ago, I had cochlear surgery.

Richard:
You’ve discovered your hearing loss was very profound by that time, obviously. Probably a little bit about the qualifications for your cochlear implant. You went to an ENT or audiologist. Tell me a little bit about that.

Nanette Florian:
I’m trying to remember what happened. I think my audiologists that worked with me for the hearing aids, I think we realized they weren’t working anymore and I was fed up. But we didn’t have the money to get the cochlear processor. So after a lot of research, I found, I can’t remember the name of the donation group in Colorado and they donated the processor to me and I have one. Just one processor. We had to pay for the surgery, but it was just delightful to have gotten the cochlear processor. It really works well.

Richard:
So how long have you had it now?

Nanette Florian:
Probably 14 years. And I still have the same.

Richard:
What do you have by the way?

Nanette Florian:
Cochlear Americas.

Richard:
Have Cochlear Americas? OK.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah, I have a Freedom, nucleus Freedom. It’s an oldie.

Richard:
You’re the first person I’ve spoken to who’s still using the Freedom.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah. I’m into vintage things. So works well. I have two of them. And when I first got them, there seemed to be problems all the time. And I was always sending it back again and they would be sending me parts, which worked fine. But, for many years now nothing’s happened. It’s been great.

Richard:
Let’s knock on wood right here.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah. Something’s going to happen. But..

Richard:
Let me ask you another question. You only have it on one side?

Nanette Florian:
Yeah.

Richard:
Are you wearing a hearing aid on the other?

Nanette Florian:
Well, like I said, it, money was a struggle because we’re self-employed and we didn’t have insurance to cover it. So we decided we were just happy that I had one side and it was such a huge improvement on my hearing that I thought, well, I don’t need the other side. I understand the other side is really important and you can hear a lot better. And another thing is, I like the idea of one ear, having nothing on it. After having these big hearing aids on my ears for so many years, I enjoy just having nothing on that ear. You know, feeling kind of normal on this side, but I don’t know what’s going to happen in my future. I may go for, I’m going to have to get new processors and I may have to go for the other side surgery too.

Richard:
If you go to the other side, obviously they’re going to upgrade the processor to something new. And if you go to a clinic that it’s a two processor clinic, you’ll get one for each side. So, that’s a possibility. Now the residual hearing you have on the one side, it doesn’t have the implant. Is there any hearing at all there or not?

Nanette Florian:
No, no, no. I can sleep through a thunderstorm. There’s no hearing at all.

Richard:
Yeah. I understand that feeling. I was deaf for 35 years before I got cochlear implants. I could sleep through anything.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah. Do you have hearing aids then?

Richard:
I wore hearing aids until I was 30. And then I lost all my residual hearing in a matter of weeks. So I went totally silent for 35 years. And I only received cochlear implants just before my 65th birthday, but I received bilateral surgery. They did two sides at the same time. So, it’s a little bit different. Now, I really would love to talk about your music career and how you hear music through them. If you could just give a little bit of background because I interviewed people who have been musically inclined, but not a professional like you. You know. I want to hear from your professional’s point of view, after your career and how the hearing loss affected it and what you did.

Nanette Florian:
Okay. So I started playing the piano when singing, when I was five and there was this picture of Beethoven. Big, beautiful painting of Beethoven over the piano. I used to look up at him and go, oh, the poor guy lost his hearing. Never realizing that the same thing was going to happen to me. But before it did, yes, I started out when I graduated from high school, I was, you know, involved in all kinds of music in high school. And my brother and I bought a motor home and we did a musical duo and we traveled all over the country together, performing, deciding where we wanted to play and it was just a fantastic time for two years. We were kind of like hippies, but not, really not really. So then we got to California, and we tried out for the new Christy Minstrels and that was the late 1970s.

Nanette Florian:
And they said, we’ll call you, don’t call us. And we traveled some more and performed some more, all over the place. And we were playing on Cape Cod in Massachusetts one summer and we had a phone call and it was from Hollywood. And they wanted us to fly out in two days and be part of the new Christy Minstrels. So, I was the standup bass player. First female standup bass player for the new Christy Minstrels and a lead singer. And my brother played the guitar and sang. And we traveled with them for about a year, which was very difficult traveling all the time on a bus or, you know, whatever. And sometimes we would perform twice a day. It was tough. After that year, I went back to Connecticut where I’m originally from. And then I started my own solo career playing the piano and singing the Eastern seaboard.

Nanette Florian:
And as time went on, I didn’t want to play for people drinking anymore, the bars and all that, because I just didn’t relate to the whole thing. So actually, I started becoming a worship team leader at church. And then I started realizing that I was singing off tune and these nice people at church didn’t want to tell me that I was out of tune, but I was. And so that was all over with. Then as time went on, I couldn’t even hear my own worship team. I couldn’t hear the music at all. And actually quit church because there was no sense in going in, you know. So, that’s when I started searching out the cochlear processor. That was all hearing aid days. And then the processor just changed my life. I could hear on the phone again, and I could hear my family talking to me, and I could be a part of group conversations again, and it’s been wonderful. But the only problem is that music is still distorted.

Richard:
Distorted how? Can you give me a little bit more explicit description of how you heard music changing and how it came through with the cochlear implant? And did it get any better with time with your cochlear implant?

Nanette Florian:
When I got my cochlear implant, I think because I am a musician, they told me that I caught on really fast to sound. I started hearing very well quickly, but as far as music’s concerned, it all sounds like it’s kind of underwater and distorted to me. But once in a while, during those first days, I noticed that sometimes there was a song that would come through to me, nice and clearly. And so I decided that I can hear music, but I need to find it. I need to find the music that I can hear, because I know that there are sounds out there that I can hear. Like I noticed on your website, you had a gong or a kind of a boggy chimey thing that you put up. And that’s exactly what I love the go for, is the chimes, I can hear them really well and they vibrate too. So you can feel it all the way through you. And that’s a real sound. That’s fun. You know, for us, people who don’t get sound the way we should, like, you know, most people do.

Nanette Florian:
What I’ve been doing now is collecting all this music. I’ve gone through thousands of songs to determine if I could hear them or not. And there’s lots of recordings that are crisp and clear and easy to hear. I just needed to find them.

Richard:
I think that’s a fantastic idea. You know, the funny thing is when I got my hearing back after 35 years, I obviously missed 35 years of music. And I took a Sony Walkman to the local library and went through the CD collection by streaming the music through the accessory, to my cochlear implants. And that’s how I caught up on 35 years of music.

Nanette Florian:
Oh, good for you.

Richard:
So we call that techniques. Which is very, very important for people to understand that if you get a cochlear implant, you may or may not recover all your music, but there are different techniques. What’s the name of your website, by the way?

Nanette Florian:
It’s hearmusicagain.org

Richard:
So, I’m going to make sure that people understand that and find that side as well. My next comment or question to you is because I have interviewed on the website, Jack Barnes, who was implanted 33 years ago, and he has gone through eight generations of processors. So to also , perhaps a question that the Freedom is not as technically advanced, by the time you can upgrade to a Nucleus Seven or whatever you get at that time. Perhaps musical sound a lot better.

Nanette Florian:
Yes. One thing I’ve noticed that men’s voices dropped down a half a key. Like I’ll be listening to a song and I know what key it’s in. I can hear it in my mind. And I know what the singer is supposed to sound like. You know, after the song has started, the singer starts up and the male voices, the beefier the voice, the lower, if he drops down and he’s not singing in the same key as the instruments. That’s something I’ve kind of noticed in higher voices. Like if it’s a tenor, a man singing tenor, that he stays in key to me in most female voices stay in key to me as well. So after I’ve collected all this music, I put it in a radio stations. I have two radio stations. So, people like us can listen to 24 hours of music, seven days a week.

Richard:
On your website?

Nanette Florian:
Yep.

Richard:
Okay. We were talking briefly before we had the interview, that what I was really about rehabilitating from music, I found that swing jazz was the easiest to rehabilitate to. When you were listening to music again, for the first time you do find something easier? Any genre of music you found more helpful to rehab with?

Nanette Florian:
Yes. And I think like, you know, as well as a single instrument alone is great. When you start piling up too many instruments, they all sort of cancel each other out and turn into a bunch of mush. But jazz is great because the horns come through really well to us. And you had a banjo player on your site and I love the banjo. It comes through so well.

Richard:
I have to tell you a brief story, that all those people I recruited, some of them did it for free. Some of them did it for $20 to give me a two minute clip. And the only instrument I have not been able to get is harmonica. Harmonica players are the biggest pains in the…

Nanette Florian:
Ah, they have attitude. Well, I wonder how the harmonica would come through. I’ve listened to harmonica music and I wasn’t sure that it was coming through clearly like a clarinet like Benny Goodman. I have such a good recording of Benny Goodman. There’s only five guys in that particular recording. And so we with hearing loss, we hear the rhythm, right? And then you can add a nice base to that and that comes through pretty good. And then if you just add one more instrument to that, it’s hearable. And especially if it’s like a saxophone or a trumpet or a clarinet.

Richard:
The acoustics fight with one another. And I understand exactly what you’re talking about. I have a decent collection of Benny Goodman vinyl. So I find vinyl. I can hear the difference in the warmth of vinyl versus CD. That’s how good the Nucleus Seven is.

Nanette Florian:
And the jazz players are great because they take turns. They’re not always playing at the same time. So on my radio stations, you’re going to hear classical and jazz and oldies and authentic country. Not country that is played now because it’s all full of reverb. All the music I try to get, you know, more modern songs on my radio shows, but there’s too much reverb. So, I go back in time, even before reverb was used in recording, like Hank Williams at the Grand Old Opry. He was recording live and there was no reverb and it’s just him and his guitar. And it’s fantastic. So I have that in my playlist as well.

Richard:
Each of us have a mission to help pay forward. Once we have a cochlear implant, we have a mission to pay it forward to help other people. You’ve done a fantastic job helping people with music because so many people I’ve spoken to are on the fence about getting a cochlear implant because they’re afraid to lose music. Even if they have 10% hearing left, they want to hear music through a hearing aid, not a cochlear implant, but we do our best to help them get the best results. It’s an ongoing thing. Rehabilitation never stops. It goes on for your life.

Nanette Florian:
Right. Well, the people with the hearing aids, they’ve probably had music most of their lives like you and I. We know a lot of music. And so you get that back. Your brain picks it up again.

Richard:
It takes time. Yes, but it does. It does. You know, one of the techniques I’ve found works very, very well. If you’re trying to rehabilitate with songs that, you know, I send people to YouTube and tell them to add in the word, the name of the song with lyrics, because the brain sees the words and hears music and it works much, much faster that way.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah. First of all, you need to know the name of the song you’re listening to. And sometimes, you know, we’ll be listening to music. There’ll be a group of people. This was before my radio stations. Cause my radio stations, I hear everything very nicely and clearly. Maybe not intonation wise on the cochlear processor, melodies don’t come through. But everything else is coming through. The processor is perfect for the spoken word, but it doesn’t distinguish melodies, but it’s still so much clearer. So I’m so happy. I’m listening all the time to music and I feel like my good old self. Again, I feel musical again.

Richard:
Music’s in your blood, it’s in your genes.

Nanette Florian:
Yes. And it’s not good to miss out on it.

Richard:
No, the socializing aspect of cochlear implants obviously are paramount. But music is in our genes. I mean, Tom Wolfe wrote a book recently called The Kingdom of Speech and in it he noted, even Darwin thought that people understood music before they spoke.

Nanette Florian:
Oh yeah.

Richard:
That’s a very fascinating topic. And I’m just happy just to hear music again. I mean I stream all day long.

Nanette Florian:
Yes. So I am debuting my radio stations at the Hearing Loss Association of America’s convention this weekend.

Richard:
That’s great. That’s great.

Nanette Florian:
Yeah.

Richard:
I would like to ask you to take the floor, and if you have a message for people who are on the fence about getting a cochlear implant, what would you tell them?

Nanette Florian:
I would say that the cochlear implant takes the stress away. It’s so much clearer because I wore the hearing aids for all those years. And it was just so stressful. And the cochlear implant just brings it so deeply and sharply into your, you know, your brain and it just so much better, so much better than the hearing aids. It just so much sharper. I have a brother with hearing aids who has a moderate to profound, and he’s on the fence about the cochlear processor too. And I know that I hear better than him.

Richard:
That’s very funny because I have another interview with a woman named Janet Fox, whose brother also has profound, very, very profound loss. She was the first to get the cochlear implant. I believe she was first. He was second. Then she got bilateral and then she was working on him to go bilateral. So it’s true. When you have a genetic loss, it’s a different situation because you want the best for your spouses or siblings. And sometimes they’re just stubborn and there’s nothing you can do. But you keep working on him. And I appreciate your time. This is a wonderful interview. I’m sure people are going to enjoy it. I’ll be sure that I mentioned your website, and I look forward to talking to you again sometime in the future.

Nanette Florian:
All right. Thank you. It was nice to meet you.

Richard:
Nice to meet you too.

Nanette Florian:
Bye-bye.
Richard:
Bye-bye now.