The road begins to hear once again!!!

Deaffy

Deaffy

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Today was my first appointment at the cleveland clinic. I had my first audiogram in roughly 4 years. During the speech processing I could not pick up nearly any words except the word hotdog. Hearing that word was amazing I have not heard anything in roughly 10 years now. The head dr looked at my scores and told me that my hearing is very poor and that I am a cochlear implant canidate. I agreed to walk down this path to potientally be able to hear again. I go back friday of this week to have my ct scan done. I am a total noob to this whole process and Im not really sure all the lingo that is going on when they discuss my audiogram. I will be keeping an online journal of the whole process of what it takes to get the CI. Man I was soo sure that my nerves were completely dead and that I wouldnt even be able to continue to seek the implant. Its finally starting to begin.
 
Great news. I know exactly how you feel because I just got mine turned on a month ago. I've been deaf for almost 20 years and I've been able to hear again in the last month.

Because it's so recent for me, and there are others on this forum who've recently gotten there's too, feel free to ask any questions. As for me you can Email or PM me any time about it.

Just to tell you a few "tech" terms or abbreviations you might read in here. I'll tell you a few of them you might run into.

CI = Cochlear Implant.
HOH = Hard of Hearing (not quite deaf)
Activation = The day the implant is turned on for the first time.

When I first started coming to this forum read those things I had no idea what they where talking about. LOL

Now for some things you might want to know that you'll have to think about.

You'll have to decide what brand of CI you'll want to get. I just got the Nucleus 5 and I'm very happy with it. I'm not trying to push your decision for you should do your homework and make your decision. But I'll tell you why I got the Nucleus 5. It's made by the company that has been around the longest and about 70% of the people who get a cochlear implant get their from this company. It's smaller. It uses less batteries and it comes with a remote. So those where my main deciding factors on choosing this one.

The other two are Med-El and Advanced Bionics

Every one of these are going to claim to be the best. So I suggest you do some research not only on their sites but also ask around and when the time comes your audiologist will discuss this with you too.

The surgery wasn't to bad for me. I didn't experience and real pain. Nothing that the pain killers they gave me didn't cure anyway. What little I did experience happened the first couple of days but it wasn't bad at all. Each experience will be a little different though.

The recover was very fast. In fact the most annoying part was having to wait a month after the surgery to get it turned on. A few days after the surgery I was ready to go but of course I had to wait for it to heal more.

When it first gets turned on nothing will sound right but you will be able to hear. Over time sounds will start to sound more and more natural. I've had mine a month and although I really can't understand much speech yet. I can hear their voices and I can pick up words here and there already. But every single day I can tell it's improving and I'm discovering new sounds. Was funny the other day when I heard a squirrel for the first time.

Well, I just wanted to share some of those things. I'm sure you can tell by this long post that I'm still excited about mine. :)

Like I said, feel free to ask any questions. Many of us here have gone through what you are about to do.

Ron Jaxon
 
Right:) I am late deafened and have a CI evaluation in March :) I already chose what company I want to go with and such. If you have any questions ask here:) You cannot PM until you've reached 50 posts so keep postin :p
 
Good luck with the process Alicia and Deaffy. I have an appointment with a ENT consultant on Feb 2nd to discuss whether or not I can have a second one and if they would recommend it.
 
The head dr looked at my scores and told me that my hearing is very poor and that I am a cochlear implant canidate.
Click to expand...
One upside of that is that it will be VERY easy to deal with the insurance companies. You are a right off the bat canidate, and you REALLY need it.
 
So I am back from my latest trip from the audi.... We did tests today with HA's I was amazed to see that I could hear the audie speaking to me and I could understand her speech only while I was looking at her face. When they did the testing with me faced in oposite direction with speech. I could hear sounds but I couldnt make out a single word what was being said. She came into the booth and brought me a packet with the implants that they offer and told me to study them and be prepaired to ask questions at our next meeting. They allowed me to bring home the HA's she said that this is part of the hearing implant program and that i must wear them for 3 months. then we will be discussing which implants I will be choosing. I asked her if medicare will pay for the implant and she said yes.. I asked again i said will there be a chance of being denied the implant she said no you are a canidate for bilateral implants.. Just keeping my posts up to date I will post back in this thread of any further progress that happens with this. god it was soo good to finally put sounds to the lips moving.. it sure made it a hellva lot easier to lipread.
 
That's awesome that things are going so well and speedy for you:) My audi is getting me phonak naidas which are for severe profound losses so that I'm always stimulated with sound and I need them to function at school and such. My first CI appt isn't until march! I have already researched a lot on the different companies and which I want to go with. There is a thread somewhere in here about the diff companies..not sure if I can find it but ill try and dig it up from the grave lol.
 
Good Luck Alicia with your CI evaluation in March I had my surgery done in London Ontario and they only use MED-EL implants. One think that really sucks living in this Province they only cover 1 implant because there is such a long waiting list for adults 2 years or more. Like you I am late deafened and because of that I understood speech when they first activated the implant just the sound was mechanical. It has been 26 weeks now and 4 Mapps I have no problems understanding speech and most things on the tv its just music and the phone right now but it takes time.
 
I think it was 1.5 years because someone canceled there surgery so I lucked out that way but it felt like forever.
 
wow! I didn't think it was that long...at least I have ha's for the interim if I am a candidate
 
1.5 years is nothing... try 2.5 years! and I'm still waiting haha. *twiddles thumbs, waiting to hear back from AB about the appeal to Medicaid*

I was declared a CI candidate Sept. 17, 2007, and since then been trying to find funding/insurance.. got medicaid last fall, but Medicaid has a stupid clause within their cochlear implant coverage guidelines for adults (children in this state get implants, no problem! but adults... that's a different story).

but good luck with your process Alicia. :) I'm sure the length of time from candidacy evaluation to surgery is different for everyone. Mine's only dragged out so long due to my not having funding/insurance until recently.
 
Ya apparently from being deemed a candidate to actually booking a surgery it's 6 month-3 year wait lol which is a long time! and this is with insurance approval cuz in my province if you are a candidate the province auto pays for the surgery and implant where as you are going through a struggle with this...i'm sure if your insurance was approved your surgery date wouldn't be that far away
 
Wow - I'm kind of surprised to hear about your wait time in London, DizzyDon62. I didn't realize people were waiting that long to get a CI. Here in Toronto, I guess my process actually started in late November 2008, when I was referred by my local hospital to the Implant program at Sunnybrook.

I first met with someone at Sunnybrook hospital in January 2009, and after several appts, testing, etc. had a surgery on November 17/09, and my implant was activated on December 9/09. So it was basically a year. Long enough, I guess, but nothing like the 2 years + you guys are talking about.
 
I looked at sunnybrook think it might be too far for me to travel tho since it would be a 5 hour drive every time there and 5 hour back
 
I wonder if part of the long wait is due to Dr. Parnes teaching at Western University as well as running a practice in the hospital. I know he only does surgeries on Tuesdays thats why they hired another surgeon last March to help with the back log. Alicia it takes me almost 3 hours each way to go to my appointments in London and with this bad weather we go down the day before. If I where you I would check with the CI department in Ottawa and see if they will do your mapping even if you have the surgery in Sunnybrook
 
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