One month and one week post-activation

ecp

ecp

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On February 14th my Advanced Bionics midscala hires 90k cochlear implant with Nadia CI processor was activated.
Immediately I could hear all sorts of things.
I could hear voices and understand my husband's words even though it didn't sound human.
I haven't had formal speech testing yet (that happens at 3 months) but my CI thresholds are around 25-30dB, a vast improvement from pre-implantation.
I can also understand so much more speech and use a phone and hear all new parts of music.
The red line is before the CI and blue is after.
 

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Well ecp that is great that you were able to benefit from your Cochear Implant so quickly.
aside: that was my experience almost 7 years ago except for using a regular telephone. Could hear the dialtone but not anyone speaking. According to Sunnybrook/Toronto 1one out of 2 were unable to use regular phone. I was one of them. Fortunately for me already had VCOTTY_ Ultratec 1140 . Just continued using it.
I was advised to keep the Implant on all the time-waking hours-in order to get "used" to all the sounds I missed previously. Wise advice.
further aside: I recall wondering why someone was "following"me at night. Just me picking up my own footsteps!

The colour of my Implant is silver
 
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I got the pirate blue color.
I haven't used my Phonak Naida hearing aid in my left ear since activation because it doesn't add anything except localization and the distortion (I have crazy recruitment) is enough to drive me mad.
 
ecp said:
I got the pirate blue color.
I haven't used my Phonak Naida hearing aid in my left ear since activation because it doesn't add anything except localization and the distortion (I have crazy recruitment) is enough to drive me mad.
Click to expand...

Hmmm......Why not get implanted in that ear then? I thought they were doing implants for recruitment....
 
deafdyke said:
Hmmm......Why not get implanted in that ear then? I thought they were doing implants for recruitment....
Click to expand...

Because most surgeon's like doing each ear individual. DeafAlex had to have each ear separately! ECP, will know what she is doing!
 
deafdyke- I was able to choose which ear I had implanted. I decided to go with the ear that could still understand speech.
It was a hard decision but with my neuroscience background, I knew that the neural pathways for hearing were well established in my right ear, whereas my left ear was much less useful.
There was significant risk in implanting my "good" ear but so far the input from my cochlear implant is so much better than anything I had from hearing aids. I can actually hear fine details of sound without being overwhelmed by 100+dB amplification. The cochlear implant does exactly what it is supposed to do, it stimulates the tonotopically appropriate areas of my cochlea for each sound and can even replicate chords and music (something I wasn't expecting before surgery).

Sometimes I get "tired" of hearing with my CI and decide to take it off but I usually put it back on because in my words "I can't hear a damn thing without this!".
When I wore 2 ultra power BTE hearing aids, I would remove them as soon as I was away from people because the constant amplification caused tinnitus that lasted hours. After a day at work with my UP BTEs, I could not function if I needed to hear. Now, instead of pointing a giant speaker at a cochlea that has few hair cells and praying that the hair cells are able to discern all the complexities of speech, there is an electrode that excites the correct places of my spiral ganglia in the order and intensity required to elicit a sound.

Sounds are so much more comfortable. For people with profound sensorineural hearing loss (I'm talking about thresholds that start at the "best" frequency at 90+dB and are never higher than 90dB (usually 110+dB)), hearing aids just make noise louder. I couldn't tell the difference between my husband's voice and noise unless I saw him speaking.
Now, he can talk to me from the next room and at the very least, I know he is talking to me.
I can usually understand what he is saying.

You can look at my profile pic to see my pre-implant audiogram. It was basically 100db in the bass an 120+ everywhere else. With Phonak's strongest hearing aids I was able to hear in the 40-60dB range for bass sounds and 90+ dB for kids and high pitches.

CIs are still a tricky subject but with just over one month of CI hearing in my right ear, I'm hearing what people with "very mild" hearing loss can hear (in a soundproof booth). It is still lightyears ahead of what I heard with hearing aids.
 
Congrats! I just saw this thread, I'm so glad the implant was such a success and with such a vast improvement! I hope you see much more improvement!
 
Just incase anybody has any questions about "real life" experiences with a cochlear implant, on Friday I gave an hour long talk and answered questions from faculty members as part of my Master's thesis defense.
I heard and understood questions from people in the back of the room. I hear and (mostly) understood questions from faculty who had very dense accents.
When I told my parents that I heard questions from people in the back of the room without a mic or repeats they almost didn't believe me because they never thought that would happen!
Obviously, I didn't understand 100% of the questions but I would say that I understood at least 90% and was able to ask for clarification on what I didn't understand.
(Also, many of the professors have never had me in class and don't know that i'm deaf/just got a CI a few months ago. they didn't hold back and I dealt with it very well)

Friday night our grad/medical/pharmacy school had the big formal dance. At the beginning of the evening the music was quiet and I could hear conversations but after a while the DJ turned the music up so loud that my hearing husband said his ears were ringing for hours after we left.
 
I had my official speech testing on Friday.
Thresholds between 15 and 20dB

AZBio in quiet: 96%

AZBio w/+20 noise (speech is 20dB louder than noise): 98%

AZBio w/+10 noise: 85%

(at this point the audiologist said I was "doing too well" because she has to keep adding more noise until I get below 50%)

AZBio w/+4 noise (speech is just 4dB louder than noise): 34%



CNC- 80% words, 87% phonemes.



Before the CI, my thresholds were between 95 and 120+; I scored 12% on the sentences and 4% CNC in quiet with Phonak Naida HP hearing aids.

I know some will say that I am just an example of how well late deafened people can do with a CI but consider that I had hearing loss for longer than I was hearing. Yes, I had auditory pathways laid out BUT SO CAN CHILDREN who are implanted early. A cochlear implant doesn't make me less deaf, I haven't forgotten ASL, I'm not less of who I was. I can now compete on nearly equal footing with my hearing peers for jobs or spots in medical school.

My audiologist told me that the patient she had before me on Friday was around my age, had similar history of hearing loss, and was implanted around the same time as me BUT he can't do speech testing at all and he has declared the CI a failure. He doesn't wear the CI, he doesn't do aural rehab, he is not a signer, he for god knows what reason got a cochlear implant with basically no intention to use it. That sucks for people who are committed and are turned down by insurance.
 
ecp.....I am so happy you are doing so well with your CI. I hope your road continues and you have new experiences every single day.
 
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