CI Activation

Congrats on a successful activation! When my CIs were activated, everything sounded metallic to me as well. This will improve with time. Enjoy your new world of sounds! :)
 
Wonderful to hear all went well. Natural response to first sounds and they do get better, if slowly. I went from metallic computers on helium to chipmunks. At least I can tell whether they are male or female chipmunks and I can understand most of what is said without speech reading :)
 
I find mappings so interesting in my case. Since I've never really "heard" before, my levels are pretty straight throughout the channels. My audiologist showed me a typical mapping of a late deafened adult, and it's all random levels. I just started the audio-verbal therapy in order to reach the goal of changing my map so I can hear as close as "normal" since I can't really tell the audiologist what sounds right/wrong. I find all of this so fascinating! I find it cool that the therapist and audiologist have to work with "the unknown" with a born (or at least early) profoundly deaf person.
 
My first CI audi had alot of experience working with people who were born profoundly deaf, so it was nothing new for her. I asked her how she helped someone with a CI hear the best they could if they were born profoundly deaf and was told that it involves some tweaking of a map in order to find what works. She also explained that people who are late deafened tend to have irregular maps due to the fact that they know what sound is like and can make comparisons about what they hear or don't hear. My current CI audi also told me that they program CIs for profoundly deaf recipients the same way she programmed my CI recently to account for my dizziness. It involves turning one or more electrodes off (in my case, 6 high frequency electrodes on each CI) and moving them to middle and low frequency electrodes in order to receive the best sound quality possible.
 
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