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My Cochlear Journey

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In reply to @pathurley

@pathurley said:

I can understand the lyrics in music. Now that isn’t perfect, the music is obviously high pitched and singer’s sound wrong. Picture the Eagles as 5 year olds, Louis Armstrong as a tenor, and Joy to The World (Three Dog Night version) as sung by contraltos. But I can understand them.

So I was looking back at what I posted back at the start and I wanted to revisit music now that I have been bilateral for 9 months.

Music works now. Does it sound like it did when my ears worked? I don’t think so, but it is definitely music and everything goes together. Now I will state again, I have always been a casual listener of music, if I was an aficionado I might feel different, but for me this is good.

The one thing I will say is that if I am listening to something new, I like to find a copy of the lyrics somewhere. Any song I already know is fine, and I am usually good after a couple of listens if I have the lyrics. New music without a copy of the lyrics can be tough depending on singer, instruments, and recording quality. Actually really like anyone listening to a new song but more so.

Fortunately I am old enough that there is a lot of stuff I already know and like so I don’t spend a lot of time hunting for new stuff anyways.

Thank you for that report, Pat. I have been activated for about 3 weeks now. My daughter is a piano teacher and she asked me just yesterday about how I am hearing music. I am hearing better when it is coming from speakers now, as in the car - which was impossible noise before. I can identify music that I already know. But, disappointingly, so far, if it is streamed into my implanted ear, it is as you describe - high pitched and off-key. Fortunately, when I stream into my hearing aid ear, I can enjoy it as it should sound, only it is in mono. My audiologist said our priority is to get my speech recognition up to snuff first, we’ll deal with music later. So I do hope that eventually “everything goes together” as you say.

So an interesting thing I realized today.

My wife is not a morning person, so I am usually up well before her. On weekdays it doesn’t matter as I am off to work and need to be hearing before I am out the door. But on weekends I usually have a couple of hours to my self before I need to communicate with anyone.

Back in my hearing aid days I would leave them out on weekend mornings. I enjoyed the quite, and not having things stuffed in my ears. But now with the I hook them up right after getting out of bed.

It wasn’t a conscious change, and I have been doing it for some 9 months now and just realized it. (My wife woke up early this morning before my hair had dried so I wasn’t on air).

Now I just need to figure out if the big change is the hearing quality or just the better physical comfort.

I enjoyed not putting the hearing aids in on weekends, I am not sure if it was the quiet or just not having things put in my ears.

There is a definite difference between how the hearing aids handled those quite household noise and how the do. Maybe it is because with the CIs I can hear those normal background noises that are part of life and with the it was just louder silence. The CIs produce a more natural quiet if that makes any sense.

So basically the quiet without the HAs sounded better then the quiet with the HAs. But the quite with the CIs on sounds like what I think quite should sound like.

Did I mention that I just noticed this effect this morning and I am still thinking it through.

@pathurley said:

silence. The CIs produce a more natural quiet if that makes any sense.

So basically the quiet without the HAs sounded better then the quiet with the HAs. But the quite with the CIs on sounds like what I think quite should sound like.

Makes since.
It’s nice to have quiet sometimes.
I have bad tinnitus all night long while the processors are off. In the morning it’s actually very nice to put the processors on to get rid of the tinnitus.
I sure hoped the tinnitus would go away with the implants.

Okay, today i got a surprise. I received a call on my office phone shortly after I got into work today. My phone has Bluetooth but I hadn’t pulled out the phone clip and turned it on yet. Well. it is a caption phone so I can get by. It was our IT office calling about a minor computer problem I had but that they needed to reset on their end. But when we were done I realized that I hadn’t looked at the captions,

I had had a normal phone conversation

So Cochlear has a number that you can call where each day the post a new 5 word list, short paragraph, and longer story to practice phone listening. There is a transcript that is available to check against (although you sometimes have to hunt around a bit because the dates don’t always line up) I turn off captions and call that on my landline and I can understand it. So I grab the cell phone turn off Bluetooth and just use it and once I got the position right I could understand it. I didn’t even need to use the . Now my office was very quite today, everyone was out at an exercise but I could hear on the phone.

The thing that drove me to get my first hearing test and aid was having trouble understanding on the phone and since I was working in an office this was a problem. And hearing aids never really fixed it, even with Buetooth but now I can hear on the phone. :grin:

In reply to @pathurley

Yes, Pat Hurley, although I am bImodal, I put the on as soon as I get up and I very rarely did that before going With . I chalk this up to enjoying all the environmental sounds which are totally new to me. I also get a kick out of not putting anything In my rt ear.
I was activated on 6/30/21 and used a new Oticon Exceed on the left ear. Progress was slow until I replaced the HA with a ReSound Enzo a month ago and now I feel like a new person with added confidence and reduced anxiety. I am in my 80s, not a tech whiz and have low vision issues. My Audis are great and really have gone the extra miles to get me out of the hole.
This forum and particularly you Pat, has held me up since these challenges started throwing curve at me. Your support and straight forward journaling has been life saving.

I am so grateful and only regret not taking this step 3 years ago.

Congratulations Fudydud. The hearing is fantastic, it makes a huge difference to what We are hearing. Life sure has changed an awful lot for me also.

Deaf_Piper thank you! It was not that long ago when sign language
Was the best option for folks like me.The iPhone and have changed it all.

In reply to @FUDYDUD

@FUDYDUD said:

I am so grateful and only regret not taking this step 3 years ago.

This is said by so many after getting cochlear implants.
I see you are about 4 months in from activation. If you are like many of us your hearing experience will just get better. Pat is a great example.
It took me almost a year to start getting directionality from 2 ’s. Even now at a year I catch myself hearing new things and understanding more about what I DO hearing.
You are doing great.

I am approved for 2nd after 12 mos but need to get used to all this first.
My short term goal was to be back at the bridge table by now but variant and masks put that off for a bit. I am wondering if my new Forward Focus will help with bidding etc.

We are hi jacking Pat’s thread. Maybe starting your own thread would be nice.
Forward Focus does great for me when used.

In reply to @FUDYDUD

Congratulations on your progress Fudydud , and I am glad that I could be of some help. That is why I do this and why I am a Cochlear volunteer, it is gratifying that something I write or say can help someone else on their jouney.

In reply to @Raudrive

@Raudrive said:

We are hi jacking Pat’s thread. Maybe starting your own CI thread would be nice

I don’t worry about a little hi jacking, almost a year into my second implant I don’t expect a lot of big announcements from me, of course I never expected to be able to just use a phone again so who knows.

I mostly see this as a thread where people can ask me things that might help them.

@FUDYDUD said:

I am wondering if my new Forward Focus will help with bidding etc.

@Raudrive said:

Forward Focus does great for me when used.

Oh yes, if you are in a quite home it won’t make much difference, but if you are in a public space it can be great at helping to remove background noise.

Also when you are ready for more to play with you might try having sensitivity turned on. Basically it adjusts how much the microphones pick up, turn it down and you only hear closer sounds (or very loud ones further away) turn it up and it picks up more. I t is not for everyone but I find it very useful in some circumstances, like turning it down in big box stores that try to play music loud to make up for their lousy acoustics, or turn it up when outside to better hear people from a distance. Or either way in the office, depending on whether I want quite to work or want to be nosey and find out what people are up to (No, bad Pat, only use your powers for good). As I said, some people find the automatic settings are fine, but I like having more options.

Please keep this thread going with the journey(s). I’m going to get evaluated at a dedicated CI center in Houston in early January. I so appreciate the info!

If you have any questions feel free to ask, we have a small but active community here.

Fun with .

You can have a head cold, with stuffed sinuses and ears so plugged they boarder on aching, but you still hear fine.

In reply to @pathurley

Hi Pat,

My name is Paul. I’d like to ask u a couple questions:

  1. Is it possible to leave the on when u go to bed, or must it b turned off? I ask bc I currently use both awake and asleep. I was in a situation where, for 12 years, I had to hear 24/7 as my wife had Alzheimer’s/Dementia and I had taken care of her 24/7 until last May when she passed away after an incredible half a century of bliss. That said, I can’t hear anything without my aids, and I can’t fall asleep without my aids on, and now living alone I need to b able to hear the environment, the phone ring, the door bell, and especially the alarm clock.
  2. After ur 2nd CI is fully functional will u b able to detect the direction the sound is coming from? I believe u mentioned that currently u hear mono sound, will that eventually change to something equivalent to stereo?

Today is my first serious day thinking about the CI and exploring the pros and cons. This website is clearly the go to place for info and interaction.

Thanks everyone, Paul

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