Anyone Been Reimplanted After Failure or For Upgrade?

[MomToDeafChild]

If you or your child has been reimplanted (for whatever reasons), I would love to pick your brain!

My daughter was recently reimplanted after a soft failure, and while we've been told it can take a year for her to get back to where she was prior to the reimplantation, no one has said what it should be like NOW, and I really need to hear what other people experienced in the early days/months post reimplantation.

It is 3 weeks now, and I feel like Abby's ability to hear is right about the same as when she was first activated. We have a couple different programs to switch between, but it was difficult finding a map she could use without it causing an eye twitch (she has a malformed cochlea). With her old implant, if volume was too high she would get the eye twitch, and on all three of the programs she has now she gets it if I touch the volume.

I've noticed that when we practice listening with the Ling sounds, she misses different sounds with the different programs. On one program she misses the Ee and Oo. On the next program, she gets the Ee easily, sometimes gets the Oo, but Mm is difficult and Sh turned to Ss. I've been using open sets of 6 2-syllable word picture cards and she does ok on them, but doesn't get them right every time, which confuses me. Sometimes she can make out sentences, but most of the time she can't.

Hearing, though, is a different story. She was listening to the rain and thunder tonight, and she was easily able to hear her sister playing Connect 4. She is hearing right about the same levels as she was with her old implant, she just has no idea what anyone is saying!

I am just worried now that something wasn't done right and it is going to affect her ability to bounce back. The audi said the biggest hurtle she has is that she didn't hear for 5.5 months, followed by the newer technology (she went from a CII to the HiRes90K). BECAUSE the medical professionals did not believe she would get her hearing back (the reimplant was really just to confirm auditory nerve failure, and would help with the next step; they never expected it to work), I worry that maybe they didn't do as good as a job as they could have!

I'd appreciate any insight. Thanks!

 

[Hear Again]

I've noticed that when we practice listening with the Ling sounds, she misses different sounds with the different programs. On one program she misses the Ee and Oo. On the next program, she gets the Ee easily, sometimes gets the Oo, but Mm is difficult and Sh turned to Ss. I've been using open sets of 6 2-syllable word picture cards and she does ok on them, but doesn't get them right every time, which confuses me. Sometimes she can make out sentences, but most of the time she can't.

I don't know what CI Abby has, but the difference in her ability to differentiate between the various Ling sounds might have to do with the processing speed and/or programs themselves. For example, the Freedom CI offers several speech strategies (Hi-ACE, ACE, CIS and SPEAK) at 720 Hz, 900 Hz, 1200 Hz, 1800 Hz and 2400 Hz. The speech strategy and Hz used can make a difference in the clarity of what Abby hears. For example, in my case, when I tried using ACE at 1200 Hz, I couldn't make any sense of what I heard, but 900 Hz sounded crystal clear. There are also other CI users who have the opposite experience -- they prefer 1200 Hz over 900 Hz. The differential could also be a normal phase of learning how to hear with her CI. I know when I was learning how to understand speech, sometimes I could understand and other times I couldn't. Sometimes this varied from one minute to the next (due to the clarity that was starting to eventually come through the distortion of what I heard through my CI) and other times it depended on the voice of the person who was speaking to me.

Hearing, though, is a different story. She was listening to the rain and thunder tonight, and she was easily able to hear her sister playing Connect 4. She is hearing right about the same levels as she was with her old implant, she just has no idea what anyone is saying!

Sometimes environmental sounds can be easier for people to hear than speech. I know this was the case for me. In fact, it took me 2 weeks before I was able to start understanding speech with my first CI even though I could hear most environmental sounds quite well.

I am just worried now that something wasn't done right and it is going to affect her ability to bounce back. The audi said the biggest hurtle she has is that she didn't hear for 5.5 months, followed by the newer technology (she went from a CII to the HiRes90K). BECAUSE the medical professionals did not believe she would get her hearing back (the reimplant was really just to confirm auditory nerve failure, and would help with the next step; they never expected it to work), I worry that maybe they didn't do as good as a job as they could have!

It may take some time for Abby to become used to the sense of hearing again since it has been 5.5 months since she heard last. However, with practice and with the newer technology of HiResolution 90K (compared to the CII), Abby should be able to bounce right back if not very close to the level of performance where she was before. I know several children who received the latest upgrade to their previous CI who did very well following their reimplantation.

I hope this information helps and is of some encouragement to you.

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[jag]

estrategies (Hi-ACE, ACE, CIS and SPEAK) at 720 Hz, 900 Hz, 1200 Hz, 1800 Hz and 2400 Hz. The speech strategy and Hz used can make a difference in the clarity of what Abby hears. For example, in my case, when I tried using ACE at 1200 Hz, I couldn't make any sense of what I heard, but 900 Hz sounded crystal clear. There are also other CI users who have the opposite experience -- they prefer 1200 Hz over 900 Hz. The differential could also be a normal phase of learning how to hear with her CI. I

I've noticed this to. I prefer 750hz. To me it's much clearer.

You could discuss processing speeds with your audi. I know when I was activated with teh freedom, after the initial activation I was given 3 programs with 3 different processing speeds to choose from. I tried those for 2 weeks then went in and had one of those put on with the different processing stratigies that Freedom offers. So you might want to try something like processing speed trials rather then just vol. to see if a slower (or faster) speed would work better for her.