My hearing journey starts again

Good luck with your CI. Keep us posted on your experience. It will heal over time.

Piper… I got N6 in 2016 and upgraded to resound HA in July 2018…made a great improvement as now able to stream to both sides with Bluetooth on cell phone and TV with the cochlear accessories… Also have the mini mic which works well for groups.

@touches it’s good to meet someone else on the board that’s gone this route. I hope your journey was successful.
I have accessories coming, phone clip and a mini mic, just waiting on them to be delivered. As I have reasonable residual at the moment I’m not sure if I will need a TV streamer or not. I’m just waiting for all the post op swelling to go down before making that decision. I also have an appointment in 2 weeks to discuss a Resound aid for my left ear, not sure which one as yet though. I will discuss that with the HA aud and see which one will suit my loss best.

I had my 1 month activation appointment today. I was thoroughly tested. They blocked my L ear and had loud white noise playing in that ear. Then they proceeded to throw 30 general knowledge questions at me. I only got 3 seconds to answer. Ugh. I got them all correct, except the 1 math question 2001 divided by 3. I just laughed at Aud and said next question.

Then came the 30 sentences where she covered her mouth with the book and said a sentence
( from 5 words to 13 words each sentence) I had to repeat verbatim. I got 1 word wrong (short and sharp.) Ugh. So with just my implanted ear I got 98.5%

In 1 month my R ear has gone from 26% WRS to 98.5%. I’m blown away by the improvement, it’s not been easy and it’s taken a lot of hard work but it’s been so worth it.

I can’t help but that makes me happy, too! Next week I have my visit at the hospital for the first interview. I can hardly wait for that day since a fortnight.

@Dani good luck with your appointment next week. Germany has some of the best CI surgeons around. What brand are you thinking you would like if you are a successful future recipient?

@Deaf_piper said:

What brand are you thinking you would like

MedEl atm.
But it depends on the surgeon what brand s/he is most experienced with.

Lets do a piano analogy, You have access to 21 keys but you have 10 fingers. You can only do 10 keys fast until you move on to another section of the piano… Same thing happens with CI, it detects and picks 10 where the freq is located in one second then moves on to another section

Today I had my 9 week post op check up with the surgeon. He’s very happy with the results of my audiogram from my CI. I also asked the surgeon to explain why I was becoming dizzy from electrode 1 and why it had been turned off. As the array is in perfect position on CT, he explained, electrode 1 is the closest electrode to the vestibule which is the balance centre of the brain. And the same with the 2nd electrode which has been capped at a certain volume. So it’s not a faulty electrode or faulty array, as someone said it could be/was.

You pretty much have higher resolution than I do, You have 20-750 hz worth of hair cells

I have 0-11 electrodes which is powering 188-1000 hz. 11-22 electrode powering the 1000hz-8000hz

You have all 750-8000 hz powered by all 21 electrode

@Deaf_piper said:

In 1 month my R ear has gone from 26% WRS to 98.5%. I’m blown away by the improvement, it’s not been easy and it’s taken a lot of hard work but it’s been so worth it.

Very happy for you Deaf_piper! When you say ‘lot of hard work’ what do you mean?

@Vogon initially I did a lot of speech therapy. I could understand speech at activation but not all words. I did this for about 1-2 hours daily. (You will find several apps in the App Store dedicated to Cochlear rehab) Then I did 1-2 hours of streaming audio books, podcasts etc. Fortunately I’m retired so my day is my own, I did this every day for a month. But now I just do the streaming of audiobooks, podcasts or news.

The effort I’ve put into the rehab has been worth every minute of my time. Some days it’s been totally inconvenient but I’ve stuck at it.

What a total disaster my visit to Hearing Australia turned out to be yesterday. I went for a 30 minute appointment to get fitted for the Enzo 2 5 for a trial, and to get the phone clip connected as well. 2 hours later I left with nothing connected, somehow in amongst all of that the Aud managed to disconnect my CI from my app as well. They even rang Resound asking for help and still couldn’t connect the phone clip. Resound updated the out of date software on the phone clip, thinking that might be the problem, but no. At the moment I’m in no mans land with nothing connected to my phone. If the phone rings I can’t answer it as I can’t hear…

I got home and sent an email off to my CI aud asking for suggestions. She kindly replied very promptly, telling me to ring the CIC down the road, from the Eye and Ear Hospital in the city, they have a lot of experience in doing this. So I have an appointment for this afternoon, s trip into the city I didn’t need, but if it gets my both ears on the air I’m a happy camper. I must take both the phone clip and the mini mic with me…And get them to do the whole lot at the one time, while I’m in at the CIC. I openly admit I’m an IT dummy, and seek help from my kids. But this Aud yesterday is worse than what I am, I’ve never come across such a bungling stuff up.

Did you get it all fixed. You went to someone who had no experience with CI?