When do you decide that you aren't getting enough benefit from hearing aids?

ecp

ecp

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So, lately even with my Naida hearing aids I've been struggling with understanding speech. In noise I am completely lost, in a small group I depend on the person closest to me to repeat or paraphrase what was said.
One on one I rock my hearing aids and can understand the person I'm talking to UNLESS they mumble or look away or there is any other noise.

In fact, tonight I'm not out with my husband and friends because I honestly couldn't face a few hours in a noisy bar, not able to understand anything and depending on my husband to sign the main points to me.

I really feel like I hear "well enough" at home (but of course I'm "hearing" the TV with captions) and my husband as long as I can see his face.

So my question is, am I deaf enough to go for a cochlear implant evaluation? I always thought I would have to wait until I was completely deaf in both ears (my left ear is already useless and I have progressive hearing loss in both ears).

My hearing aids are maxed out, often it seems that the amplification provided by my hearing aids only helps in knowing that there is a sound but sounds don't make sense. It even seems like it is harder to hear+lip read when I'm wearing my hearing aids (I guess because I spend so much brain power trying to decipher the sounds I'm hearing and there are so many random sounds).

Any thoughts would be welcome. In the past few months I've only worn my hearing aids when I'm outside our house AND expect to have to talk to people. So, grocery shopping...DEAF.

And I'm pretty annoyed with this seeming self-imposed isolation. I'd love to be out in a bar talking with friends but right now it just seems impossible.
 
Hi ecp,
I was the same situation as you are now. I used to wear Phonak Naida III UP DaZ. I always cranked my hearing aids to the MAX and yet I have diffculty understanding voices. I always goes like Huh?, Im sorry, can you say it again? Or I just pretend to understand and nod. Also some of my friends tried called my name. Shane! SHANE! SHANEEEE!! SHANE!. Then I will noticed and turn around. Anyway, that why I decided to get cochlear implant. All I want is to make the hearing world to be "easier" for me. Honestly, you don't have to be FULL 100% deaf. 60% or 70% deaf would be enough, I think. Its depend on your CI evaluation and your clinic. Honestly, I think you would be good candidate for cochlear implant.So, why not make an appointment, see your CI clinic and see how it goes?
 
you don't have to wait until you're 100% fully deaf for a CI. If you feel like you're struggling as it is now with hearing aids, it couldn't hurt to call up the CI center and request to be evaluated. They will make the decision based on your hearing loss levels, and speech comprehension. If you score 60% or worse with the speech comprehension, more than likely you'll be declared a candidate. Of course, different insurance companies will have their own criteria (medicare says 40% or worse, for example). When I went through the evaluation, I was a candidate in both ears, but I wanted the dead ear implanted (and I scored around 52% with the right ear alone on speech comprehension the first couple of times, then lower the 3rd time).
 
Awesome. My speech understanding was 52% in my better ear 3 years ago and before I had a major drop in hearing.
For my last audiogram my new audiologist didn't even try speech understanding because of the severity of my pure tone loss. That sort of annoyed me but the recorded speech tests couldn't go up to the level they would have needed to go to.

But I still feel like I understand too much to need a CI.
 
ecp said:
Awesome. My speech understanding was 52% in my better ear 3 years ago and before I had a major drop in hearing.
For my last audiogram my new audiologist didn't even try speech understanding because of the severity of my pure tone loss. That sort of annoyed me but the recorded speech tests couldn't go up to the level they would have needed to go to.

But I still feel like I understand too much to need a CI.
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You sound like me..ok when it's quiet one on one if people are looking at you but forget it otherwise. Qualifications are less than 50% speech with your HA's in their tests. They read single words and sentences and you have to repeat back what you hear/understand--do not guess at what you "think" they said.

I also got to the point where I just didn't go out because it wasn't a whole lot of fun watching people have a good time and having to say "what did you say", "can you repeat that" about 1000 times each night. At least your husband will repeat things for you, my husband just gets irritated.....

I got my first implant a couple weeks ago, activation in another week. I'm expecting much better speech understanding based on my research. For most people with residual hearing, CI's are much better than HA's. I got the new Advanced Bionics Mid Scala-designed for people with residual hearing--and I will get the new Naidia processor when it is out and a Neptune to use for now (I get 2 so I keep the neptune).
 
I quit hearing aid as soon as I realize that I was born Deaf, pointless to have hearing aid when I never understand any of these sounds. Its like trying to visualize the colors when you never seen them before.
 
Your husband is supposed to put you first, yet he goes to bar with friends!! If he does that again, spend your money on something turbocharged. Drive a car with turbo all night long while he have fun with his posse.
 
I'd feel guilty trying to get my SO to stay home just because I didn't want to go out and deal with the noise. That kind of thing sows seeds of resentment as well. Heck when I was married I didn't want to go out with my husband ALL the time, girls nights and boys night are important, you are not merely an extension of your partner, it's good to just be "you" on occasion.

But to ecp, I think the deciding factor if whether to get implanted or not is if you feel you're not benefitting enough with hearing aids. It's sounds like you've reached that point. Honestly I'm starting to feel like hearing aids for profound loss is more frustrating than anything. When my loss was severe they were fine, even in noisy situations it wasn't THAT bad. But it seems like it doesn't matter if you were born with profound loss or developed it later, hearing aids just can't quite cut it. It's close, like the sounds are right there, yet too elusive for full comprehension. That make sense?
 
dereksbicycles said:
Your husband is supposed to put you first, yet he goes to bar with friends!! If he does that again, spend your money on something turbocharged. Drive a car with turbo all night long while he have fun with his posse.
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No.
I told him (without resentment) that he should go out (he is in pharmacy school and one of his favorite professors died very suddenly this week so he and his friends wanted to get together).
We usually have date night on Saturdays but we rescheduled to tonight and had an awesome date night tonight.

I think it was very important that he had time to grieve with his pharmacy school friends. He spent the past two years being taught by this professor and we even saw him early last week but suddenly he is dead. I go to the same school but am in a different program and my interactions with this professor were limited but he was an amazing and wonderful man.
My husband and his friends absolutely need time and space.


We have only been married since June (but have been together for much longer) and I think it is important that he has time with his buddies and I have time with my friends.
 
ambrosia said:
I'd feel guilty trying to get my SO to stay home just because I didn't want to go out and deal with the noise. That kind of thing sows seeds of resentment as well. Heck when I was married I didn't want to go out with my husband ALL the time, girls nights and boys night are important, you are not merely an extension of your partner, it's good to just be "you" on occasion.

But to ecp, I think the deciding factor if whether to get implanted or not is if you feel you're not benefitting enough with hearing aids. It's sounds like you've reached that point. Honestly I'm starting to feel like hearing aids for profound loss is more frustrating than anything. When my loss was severe they were fine, even in noisy situations it wasn't THAT bad. But it seems like it doesn't matter if you were born with profound loss or developed it later, hearing aids just can't quite cut it. It's close, like the sounds are right there, yet too elusive for full comprehension. That make sense?
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You have two very good points.
On the latter, I think I'm at that point. I feel like I "hear" too much for a CI but then I realize that being able to understand speech even in quiet without looking. (Last week I was looking at microscope images in my advisor's office and she said something to me. She was about 2 feet from me in a quiet office and with my hearing aids I couldn't understand what she said. Ugh)
 
ecp said:
You have two very good points.
On the latter, I think I'm at that point. I feel like I "hear" too much for a CI but then I realize that being able to understand speech even in quiet without looking. (Last week I was looking at microscope images in my advisor's office and she said something to me. She was about 2 feet from me in a quiet office and with my hearing aids I couldn't understand what she said. Ugh)
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Yep, exactly. Sometimes I feel like my aids don't necessarily make it easy to hear, so much as they make it easier to speech read :/
 
ambrosia said:
Yep, exactly. Sometimes I feel like my aids don't necessarily make it easy to hear, so much as they make it easier to speech read :/
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Do you ever feel like all the noise makes it harder to speech read? I've been feeling that more and more often. Like, I forgot to wear my hearing aids on a recent lunch with friends. I told them that and they made sure to face me when talking but without all the random noises, I felt that I could speech read much better than usual.
 
I should also mention that music used to be so important to me, I used to spend hours listening to my iPod or to my husband singing (he has a beautiful bass voice) but in the past few months I've listened to maybe two songs.
Music used to elicit an emotional and visceral response in me but now it just sounds like noise.
 
I've never really thought about it but I think you could be right. Every now and then I go out with a friend to a bar, while the band is playing my aids shut everything down, when they stop, then it's just noisy as hell. I think I have an easier time speech reading when the band is playing, AND I seem to have easier time understanding people talking than the hearing peeps when they're playing :D

Music, bums me out, big time. It was a huge part of my life, my teeth actually gnash when I people hear say music is overrated. They have no idea, none. How much it can effect your mood, and if your feeling pissed off listening to angry music, or heart broken listening to sad love songs.....driving in the car and belting out feel good tunes....you get the idea. Music isn't just a hearing experience, it can be an emotional one. I miss it for sure. Songs I know, I can listen to, but it's more like there's just enough for me to recognize and like relive it, a song a never heard? Forget it, noise.
 
ambrosia said:
I've never really thought about it but I think you could be right. Every now and then I go out with a friend to a bar, while the band is playing my aids shut everything down, when they stop, then it's just noisy as hell. I think I have an easier time speech reading when the band is playing, AND I seem to have easier time understanding people talking than the hearing peeps when they're playing :D

Music, bums me out, big time. It was a huge part of my life, my teeth actually gnash when I people hear say music is overrated. They have no idea, none. How much it can effect your mood, and if your feeling pissed off listening to angry music, or heart broken listening to sad love songs.....driving in the car and belting out feel good tunes....you get the idea. Music isn't just a hearing experience, it can be an emotional one. I miss it for sure. Songs I know, I can listen to, but it's more like there's just enough for me to recognize and like relive it, a song a never heard? Forget it, noise.
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Losing music is hard. My dad is a musician and my husband has been the solo bass in many choirs and acapella groups.
I found that I enjoy music and my friends much more when I just turn my hearing aids off or don't wear them in really noisy places.

But I also have huge problems with extra hearing loss and tinnitus in loud places.
If I wear my hearing aids for 3 hours in a noisy place, I am absolutely completely deaf for 8 or more hours. My tinnitus roars and the TV on its max setting sounds like a whispered whisper.

My mom always nags me that since I have progressive hearing loss, I shouldn't be around loud noises...

Also, if someone told me music is overrated I'd probably point them to some of my paintings (I was an art and biology major). If it weren't for Michael Franti or Jimmy Cliff (both feature heavy bass) I'd have been so much more depressed.
 
ecp, you should go for CI. Don't wait until you become 100% deaf, you would miss lots of things during that time.
I still heard something with my HAs when I got my CI, but the sound was just something extra to make lipreading a bit easier.
CI is definitely better and although it isn't perfect, it still allows you to do and understand much more than HAs.

Btw, I don't know if it is CI or my head, but when I'm in noisy places, I don't have any problems with hearing when the noise stops. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that CI "limits" the maximum loudness so the hearing nerve isn't overstimulated, I don't know.
 
I wasn't getting much out of my HA (one ear was dead, so no point in wearing a HA in that ear) anymore, so I looked into CIs and decided to go for it. No one ever recommended it to me as a solution. That's kind of sad, because it's really improved the quality of my life. I can communicate so much easier now, and anyone who used to be able to understand speech without lip reading and can't is probably a good candidate.

My HINT scores went from 22% with my one HA to 93% with the CI only. I haven't been tested with both the HA and CI in, thanks to needing two separate audiologists, but I know I do better with both in and the score would be higher.

Left ear audiogram is 55db@80Hz loss increasing to 70db@250 Hz and NR at 2kHz+. (Typical ski slope progressive loss).

Right ear CI audiogram is 10-20db response in all frequency ranges. I have no residual hearing now, and the only thing I could hear before my CI surgery in that ear was water directly hitting my eardrum in the shower.
 
if you wanna go for CI, go ahead! but I'm sure you'll have fun times with it once you have it
 
ECP,

A lot of what you are describing sounds just like what I was going through when I began the CI process. It definitely sounds like it's time. I've been saying it..... getting a CI is not just for when you hear nothing at all. Just because we hear vowels and environmental sounds with a hearing aid does not mean we have useful hearing. This is a fact that will give you a good hard slap upon activation that will leave you wishing you hadn't wasted time.

This is going to be an exciting and rewarding adventure that you are about to embark on!
 
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Thanks for the responses.
I will ask my audiologist if she can refer me to a cochlear implant center. My insurance is a jerk but they might approve a CI if I'm willing to fight hard and I am.

But I still have doubts because sometimes I can understand the TV without reading captions but this is rare. Somehow my brain thinks that being able to hear and somewhat understand TV commercials that aren't captioned totally means I can understand speech in real life. Stupid brain.

I'm going to talk to my audi.
Thanks so much.
 
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