CI recipients, how are you all going?

I’ve been on and off the forum for the last year and just noticed this post and I was mentioned. Well, I’m going on 2 1/2 years on my implant. At first I was afraid to go through the surgery, but glad I did. Like @Deaf_piper , I’m bimodal. I still hear well enough to wear a hearing aid in one ear. Without the aid or sound processor,I can hear, but not well. The implant has been great. I mostly wear my Kanso 2 , but I also have an N7.

In my implanted ear I’m around 55-60 % with it alone, but 93-97% using both devices. Noise is a bummer and certain voices are tougher to hear than others. When I use both devices, things sound great and it’s nice to have hearing and sound 360°. I’ve mostly been single sided with my hearing most of my life, but not in this way. My right ear was my good ear and my left has had nerve damage most of my life. I used my right ear to hear. In 2017, I got hearing aids and found I could hear out of my other ear. This worked until I suddenly lost the hearing in my right ear suddenly and completely just before Christmas 2019. Thank goodness I had the hearing for my left ear.

I had seen an ENT, but bybthe time I was able to get in to see her, it was almost 3 weeks later snd too late to recover any hearing in my right ear. A month later, I saw a surgeon that did cochlear implants, technically, he was a neurosurgeon. Found out I was a candidate for implant surgery and had it done in July, 2020. I’m lucky because it was successful, and for me painfree. I feel very lucky for that. I’ve done well with my implants and the sound processor. I can definitely tell the difference when not wearing my sound processor. My hearing is so much better with both devices. Nothing new on either ear, still the same. This technology is nothing short of a miracle!

I just had my second mapping at 4 months post activation with AB CI. I am very happy with my progress and hope it gets even more refined with more time. Today I booth tested for my CI ear in the normal range across frequencies. I tested 95% for both single word and sentence understanding with my CI ear. Can’t ask for much better. I had a lot of reverb from my own voice and while streaming/on phone calls, so they reduced volume of some of my higher range electrodes and it seems to help. Hope all of you are doing well with the journey.

95% impressive results.

Excellent results, well done Joan.

You have awesome results Garenio. Happy to read you have solved your issue by having 19 turned off, and doing very well.

It’s likely another 10 yrs out. Reportedly, the sound quality is suffering; though, it may still improve before it gets approved.

Hi
Not sure if anyone is still “on” for this thread. I’m new to the forum. 75 yrs old, bilateral implants (N7). I got an implant for my right ear a long time ago, back in 2011. At that time, I had a Widex HA in my left ear, altho the two aids were not really bi-modal. They depended on my brain for coordination, but things actually seemed to work out well. Over time, hearing in my non-implanted ear degraded. I muddled along with speech recognition of about 30% in my non-implanted ear, about 90% in the impanted ear.
A year ago, I went bi-lateral. A rocky beginning, the new implant had a factory bug of some sort that the on-phone support tech at Cochlear helped me sort out. He sent a replacement processor which seems to be working as well as the aud expected (my own expectations are much higher, but…).
I finally admitted that I needed to do rehab for the new device, which I’m slowly working thru. I’m very grateful for the suggestions that I read here about rehab apps and using ESL classes. I’ll try them, I found Cochlear CoPilot really boring, and difficult to motivate myself toward.
This forum is a wealth of wonderful information. An enthusiatic, if belated, thank you to all of you.

I found by just streaming to my CI ear very helpful. Leaving off my HA for rehab pushed my CI ear to do all the work. Have you tried leaving off your first CI, and just work the one side?

@user699 said:

Over time, hearing in my non-implanted ear degraded. I muddled along with speech recognition of about 30% in my non-implanted ear, about 90% in the impanted ear.
A year ago, I went bi-lateral. A rocky beginning, the new implant had a factory bug of some sort that the on-phone support tech at Cochlear helped me sort out. He sent a replacement processor which seems to be working as well as the aud expected (my own expectations are much higher, but…).

Welcome to the forum.
You are doing great with older CI.
I agree with Deaf_piper about streaming to your new CI only. If you can take your older CI processor off and just use the new CI for as long as it takes to get your new CI word understanding in the 70+ range. This was how I trained my first CI. The second CI I was fortunate to have pretty good understanding at activation.
Good luck with your new CI.

Agree! I had good understanding from the start - so audio books and the phone number on the Cochlear site for blue tooth phone practice has been helpful.

Hey Pat, been a while.
Both test scores are great.
Is that bilaterally?

Yeah life has been a little crazy. I try to keep an eye on the forum at least to answer questions, but usually by the time I get to it, someone else has already said anything I would.

And yes those were bilateral tests, given the numbers and my general satisfaction with things over the last year there didn’t seem to be more testing as she wasn’t going to make any adjustments to the map.

Interesting results. lol But all in the AMAZING category, so it’s all good news.

WOW! Pat they are outstanding scores for you. You have to be very happy with this outcome.