My Cochlear Journey

@joanhawsey said:

The connectivity with the Phonak Marvel is great-hands free phone use like I have now with my Oticons.

Not sure I understand this statement.
Oticon does not have hands free phone calls like Phonak. With Phonak you can leave your phone in a totally different room and have a phone call. All other hearing aid manufacturers that I know of you must have the phone near your face to have a phone call.

You have not mentioned Cochlear, have you researched them. Their Nucleus 7 and Kanso2 are iOS and Android compatible.

Raudrive: You are correct about the hands free - With my Oticon HAs I do have to have my phone near - but no other device. And the Phonak Marvel with the AB CI would offer that completely hands free feature - even better than what I have now instead of taking a step back with Med El. They are not set to offer that for at least a few years from what I gather. I will note that AB does not have an off ear receiver and won’t for a few years. I would rather wait for that than the hands free.

I dismissed Cochlear early on because of they way the electrodes have just one current source shared among all electrodes rather than a current source or two for each. Honestly, I don’t understand it all, but early in my reading I decided that was not preferable - could be wrong. The AB and Med El seem to have more middle tone options between electrodes, but again, I could have this all wrong as far as impact. This is covered, confusingly, on Cochlearimplanthelp.com5. I would love to understand it all better, but as many say, they all work for users, so maybe I don’t need to.

@dieslgrl this is very true, AB have had many failures with the internal parts needing to be removed and reimplanted. It’s common knowledge, they had a recall as recently as early last year.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfRes/resCollection_2.cfm?ID=44868&CREATE_DT=2006-04-3

This one is the 3D hires implant, the one they are implanting now.
Advanced Bionics recalls certain cochlear implants due to hearing degradation - MassDevice7.

Congrats, Sarah! Your wish finally came true.

@pathurley said:

Sentences in quite Left 98%, Right 100%, Bilateral 100%

In noise; Left 68%, Right 69%, Bilateral 85%,

Amazing….
Congratulations Pat

That is fantastic! Good for you!

How long have you been bilateral?

Yes, although my first rehab wasn’t all that difficult either. But the difference between one ear and two ears is amazing.

@pathurley said:

But the difference between one ear and two ears is amazing.

I totally agree with this.