What it feels like while wearing the CI?

FYI: it is neurological not nerological Cheers!
 
Taric25 said:
Wow, I watched the video. That was a lot of good information, but I don't understand how that's supposed to work for people who have lost the hair in their inner ear (very common) or who do not have a working auditory nerve (not so common).
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The way I understand it is it works just like a HA would for those same people. I have/had a sen/nueral loss, I wore HA's since the age of about 14, I'm now close to 50 and have gone with the CI since I wasn't getting that much benefit from my HA's that I wanted....CI does give me that. :) The point is....many people with damage to the hairs in the inner ear do not need CI's right away and are given HA's to bring the sound up to the level necessary to hear and understand it.

The Envoy is an internal HA which amplyfies the sound in the middle ear. Just as the Vibrant Soundbridge from MedEl does. There are differences in the two systems, one being the Envoy has no external equiptment to wear.

Actually one advantage of an internal HA from the point of having to pay for it is there would/should be no battery cost and the device should only cost whatever your co pay for your particular insurance says you have to pay. Of course the copay for the battery replacement could be higher then the cost of batteries for an external device over the same period of time to I suppose.
 
Inner Ear Hearing Loss

jag said:
The Envoy is an internal HA which amplyfies the sound in the middle ear. Just as the Vibrant Soundbridge from MedEl does.
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Oh, so it actually has no use for someone who is stone deaf, due to hair loss in the cochlea or a malfunctioning auditory nerve, right?
jag said:
The point is....many people with damage to the hairs in the inner ear do not need CI's right away and are given HA's to bring the sound up to the level necessary to hear and understand it.
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Well, I understand how it would make the sounds louder to hear them, but I don't understand how it would make them clearer to understand them, since it stimulates neither the wall of the cochlea nor the auditory nerve.
 
Taric25 said:
Oh, so it actually has no use for someone who is stone deaf, due to hair loss in the cochlea or a malfunctioning auditory nerve, right?
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Correct.

Taric25 said:
Well, I understand how it would make the sounds louder to hear them, but I don't understand how it would make them clearer to understand them, since it stimulates neither the wall of the cochlea nor the auditory nerve.
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Interesting point! Sometimes a HA can make it clearer for the person. In certain cases, one simply needs more sound energy to stimulate the damaged cochlear hairs and thus stimulate the cochlea/auditory nerve. In other cases, it wouldn't make any difference as there aren't enough cochlear hairs to work with and thus clarity suffers.

I noticed that myself when my hearing was getting worst (with HA) and just being louder wasn't doing the trick. I wanted clarity not loudness.
 
I think it is like this. Let's say you are driving down the road and you feel a car with a music boom box coming behind you, but he is 3 or 4 cars away so the vibration is very faint to you. But when he decided to turn volume up louder, the vibration get stronger. That's how hearing aids work.

But with a cochlear, it is like bringing that car with a music boom box next to your car. Cochlear implant brings sounds next your good nerves hair so it is crisper and clearer (of course, being INSIDE that car would be like a normal hearing). I think cochlear Implant only send out vibrations than sounds . I think vibrations is how cochlear recognize sounds, but I could be wrong.
 
sr171soars said:
Correct.
. In other cases, it wouldn't make any difference as there aren't enough cochlear hairs to work with and thus clarity suffers.

I noticed that myself when my hearing was getting worst (with HA) and just being louder wasn't doing the trick. I wanted clarity not loudness.
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Yes if I remember correctly you can compare the cochlear hair nerves to the keys on piano - so different groups of hair nerves will be dedicated to carrying a different pitch of sound. So if a very high number of hair nerves are badly damaged or none functional then you will not have clarity no matter how high you ramp up the volume.
 
Ephesians2_8 said:
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I think cochlear Implant only send out vibrations than sounds . I think vibrations is how cochlear recognize sounds, but I could be wrong.
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Er...not vibrations...that is not how a CI works. The processor converts the sounds into electrical impulses/signals and sends this onto the electrode in the cochlea. The cochlear nerve picks these signals up and transmits it to the brain.
 
Boom Car

Ephesians2_8 said:
Cochlear implant brings sounds next your good nerves hair so it is crisper and clearer
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Actually, that's not how the CI (Cochlear Implant) works. The CI does not depend on the "good hair" inside the the cochlea. The CI depends on the auditory nerve that connects the cochlea to the brain. The is designed with people with non-fuctioning coclear hairs in mind.
sr171soars said:
Er...not vibrations...that is not how a CI works. The processor converts the sounds into electrical impulses/signals and sends this onto the electrode in the cochlea. The cochlear nerve picks these signals up and transmits it to the brain.
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That's right.

So what about people who don't have a functioning auditiory nerve?: ABI (Auditory Brainstem Implant).
 
ahh, I must be thinking of something else...I think it was turning vibration into electrical impulse. Sorry.
 
Im serious consider to have one myself so it'll be long processing. I hope it will accept for me to have a CI. Will have update to let ya know how it goes.
 
SpaceyUFO said:
Im serious consider to have one myself so it'll be long processing. I hope it will accept for me to have a CI. Will have update to let ya know how it goes.
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yea It is a big decision and only your heart can tell u what is the right thing to do.

I dont mind getting CIs if there was no surgery involved..know what I mean? For me, I dont feel ready for it and I dont know if I ever will be. I do want to hear more than what my HAs can provide but something is telling me that I am not ready for the next step. Just weird. It sounds like are really ready for that step. Good luck! :)
 
It took me 3 years before I actually went ahead and got a CI. Until I made my final decision, I kept telling my family and friends that I was going to get a CI, but never followed through with plans to be evaluated at a local CI center or to discuss the questions I had about CIs with a surgeon/audi.

After my CI application arrived in the mail, it spent almost a month sitting in a drawer because I kept telling myself I had too much hearing to qualify and that CIs were for people who were totally deaf.

It wasn't until two frightening incidents happened to me (being locked inside a building because I didn't hear people leave and being unable to hear emergency personnel as they were giving treatment to my mother who was terminally ill with cancer) that I finally decided the time was right for me to get a CI. From that point on, I never looked back. I'm very happy with the decision I've made, but as Shel pointed out, the decision is not an easy one to make. You have to be ready to make a committment not only for surgery, but also for mappings (which are pretty frequent during the first couple of months your CI is activated) and the listening practice required to get the most out of your CI.
 
For a long time I was against getting CIs for myself. I remember being told at age 18 that I could not get an implant. As it turns out, my father was misinformed; they told him that cochlear implants weren't designed for those with nerve deafness. In any case, I would not have been accepted as a candidate as I'm prelingually deaf. Implants were used only for postlingually deaf adults in those days.

A few years ago when undergoing an audiological and medical evaluation, I got offered a chance to have a cochlear implant and I turned the doctor down.

It wasn't till last year that I changed my mind. Posts at Alldeaf made me realize that an implant could help better than my HA did. However, I know that success is not guaranteed with implants. You also have to be prepared to do mapping and stuff.

Even so, I thought I had too much hearing to qualify for implants despite extreme difficulty in hearing other people and stuff. I did decide to have my hearing tested at UNC. I was surprised at my HINT results. I had expected to do better than I did - never mind the fact I never could make out words on the intercom or the phone.
 
deafskeptic said:
A few years ago when undergoing an audiological and medical evaluation, I got offered a chance to have a cochlear implant and I turned the doctor down.
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Same here. About three years ago an audie suggested that maybe I could get tested for it and I was so insulted that I changed audies. This was at a time when I, although profoundly deaf was quite content with my hearing aids. I had a few misconceptions about CIs back then too. I thought it was brain surgery and a major 8 hour operation. I also thought that pre-linguals could not benefit from CIs.

It goes to show that people can only go through the process in their own time and as Hear Again's experiences show it's often a life event that gives us a wake up call and leads us to reconsider previous thoughts and assumptions.
 
Despite what some people think, I don't think most of us rushed into getting cochlear implants.
 
R2D2 said:
Same here. About three years ago an audie suggested that maybe I could get tested for it and I was so insulted that I changed audies. This was at a time when I, although profoundly deaf was quite content with my hearing aids. I had a few misconceptions about CIs back then too. I thought it was brain surgery and a major 8 hour operation. I also thought that pre-linguals could not benefit from CIs.
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deafskeptic said:
A few years ago when undergoing an audiological and medical evaluation, I got offered a chance to have a cochlear implant and I turned the doctor down.
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Yeah, when I was 10 years old or so, my audie told my dad that I was a possible candidate for a CI, but we never went through with it because (my dad says) I wasn't what they were looking for in their study or whatever it was...a trial, I think. I'm not sure I believe him, though.

And then last spring I had to go to an audie to have an audiogram done so that the VR here could open my case for me, and while at the audie, a CI was suggested, but I didn't know shit about it yet and I thought that no way in hell Medicaid and Medicare would ever pay for it, so I turned it down - I wanted to do my own research first and then get the ball rolling on my own - I didn't think I would be approved anyway. Around that time I came to AD and started reading all the threads and I learned a hell of a lot and also found out that, yes, Medicare and Medicaid would cover the CI and all CI related expenses! So, I finally got the ball rolling in late August and had the surgery on Oct 11th. I had wanted a CI since I was a little girl but did not want to rush into it not knowing anything about it. :D
 
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