Update on Cochlear Implant

Mary asked how things were going with the Cochlear Implant so I thought I would give an update. Wednesday (2/22) will be 6 months since implant surgery. March 28th will be 6 months since activation. At my last appointment in December, they evaluated and said that my hearing with the implant in noisy environment was up to 44%. That’s without closed caption or speech reading. They say it takes 6 months to 1 year to reach full benefit of implant.

I’m hoping I will continue to improve. I’m not hearing as well as I would like. I still rely a lot on my ability to speech read and my left hearing aid for understanding people. Group situations are still difficult.

When I do hearing therapy, with just the Nucleus 7 on my right ear, voices are robotic and hard to understand. However, if I add speech reading or closed captioning my understanding of speech improves dramatically.

At my March appointment I’m expecting to receive an upgrade to Nucleus 8. This device is smaller and lighter which may help with the periodic ear tenderness. I will provide another update in March.

I’m reserving my judgement on benefit of the cochlear implant until the full year is up. In the meantime, I am trying to increase my time with YouTube videos and other forms of listening with just the implant to try to improve my understanding of speech.

Mary, good luck to your personal trainer. I love the digital hearing aids. When I first tried hearing aids they were not digital and thus did not improve my hearing in high frequency sounds. With the digital aids they were able to tailor the aids to my specific hearing lost. The improvement was dramatic. However, in the beginning, I got exhausted with listening. That passed quickly and I was able to wear the aids all day.

I will provide an another update after my March appointment. If anyone has any questions I will do my best to answers, just let me know.