That makes sense. You probably had a good idea of what you were missing as your hearing worsened. I don't have a good idea of what im missing unless I try one of my old HAs or if I turn the volume down. What I hear currently sounds normal to me, I am the one who's surprised that others hear so much better, it's like they have super hearing
I have no concept of what clarity is, I just know I can't hear mechanical voices. Human voices(especially male) I can hear some words without lip reading. I get by great reading lips, don't care for phones, communicate by email and IM and have CC on all TV so I consider environmental sounds more important. HAs are a success so far in the lows but they leave alot to be desired in the highs. May I ask what your aided audiogram was for HA? Did you experience distortion, recruitment, etc if the audiologist attempted to max out the gains? This is one thing I don't understand as I never experienced any of that.
For me, having Bilateral CI's is a success story. It works perfectly fine, and I can hear 10db - 20db across the board (with exception of 25db, possibly since I wasn't tested yet, in the very high frequencies above 2500hz). I still have to go for MAP sessions and stuff, so there's still a lot of room for improvement. To be honest, there's more ways to adjust a CI than there is for a digital Hearing aids. Not all audiologists have the expertise like yours, so you are very lucky.
Your results is the best ive ever seen with CIs, in fact too good
hope your brain gets used to all the extra sounds so you can use the 10db map more often, that's considered normal hearing. You also hear from 40Hz to 15KHz, an exceptional range for CI. I read that a realistic range is 250Hz to 8KHz. Are you even able to tolerate such high frequencies? Must be pretty interesting the first time you heard 8KHz to 15KHz
Also, if your audiologist is willing, and still can't figure out why you're not getting the gains that you want, you can always request a representative to come over and test it out on you. A lot of CI audiologists do allow representatives to come over to work out the kinks and issues for CI users, and more often the CI user is more than satisfied with the results. Reps pretty much is more of an expert, so it's nice to have them come over and help out. Maybe there's a small thing that your audiologist overlooked, or didn't think about how to program and stuff.
The audie who sold me those HAs lives in Toronto, he's also my 2nd cousin and I got the new HAs when me and my family visit extended family in Toronto. I didn't have the knowlege about HAs as I do today otherwise I would have asked more questions and got the issues resolved. He basically just told me not to worry, wear those HAs and train your brain to get used to the new sounds which ive done. Several months later, I find a few things that need improving. I will email my audie again as I didn't recieve a second reply with my additional questions. As for a representative, could I get one that works at Phonak to figure out why their HA is giving me half the gain it should at higher frequencies?
Very few people have hearing at 0 db. 0 decibles is defined as what a normal hearing adult could detect at each frequency, 50% of the time. To think that you can get to that why turning you hearing aids all the way up doesn't seem logical to me.
Ive always been told that 0db was perfect hearing and that normal hearing is actually up to 25db hearing loss. A person that hears 25db across the board aided or better yet unaided should have no problem understanding speech. The average adult person with normal hearing probably hears around 10db from 250Hz to 4000Hz and slightly less at 8000Hz, which gets worse the older the person is.
Also, we wanted speech, not just enviromental sounds, so we didn't care about keeping her residual hearing. It was useless without amplification anyway.
Did she keep her residual hearing anyway and how much of it? When/if I ever decide to get a CI, keeping my residual hearing is very important. It may be nearly useless without a HA but I hear plenty of enviromental sounds and some speech with HAs. What if the CI doesn't work right or isn't as good as I was getting with HAs? No person has a 100% chance of success, not even a "perfect" candidate. By keeping the residual hearing, I have a plan B to go back to HAs. I also can alternate between HAs and CI because I read that a CI usually doesn't do a great job below 250Hz and a HA lets me hear low frequency environmental sounds and bass music. Alot of the people I know also consider retaining residual hearing to be important and for reasons similar to mine. Each person's different, but I can speak for myself and many others I know.
As for her loss, I believe severe starts at 70 across all frequencies, so she was very very nearly there.
Was it a progressive loss? Someone else said they can make exceptions below 70db if the loss is rapidly progressing anyway.
Bilateral, we haven't decided about. Insurance may not cover it, and she does get benefit from her aid, so we have time to spare.
Are you waiting for better CI technology for her other ear or even a cure? Ive read about totally implantable CI, 128 electrodes, fiber optic/laser CI electrodes and several other exciting technological prospects that get ME excited about wanting CI. Of course the prospect of a cure is a wildcard. A cure is a question of when, not if. Could be 10 years, could be 25 years no one knows. I have time to spare as well. If I was born the same time Kat was, it's possible my parents would have made the choice for me to get a CI for the same reasons you got one for Kat. CI technology was very crude, primative and expermental when I was a young child. It was only done on those who were 100% stone deaf. I made do with HAs quite nicely and got lots of speech training as a kid. My speech pronunciation and lip reading is now excellent and I can hear some speech too. My hearing was much worse than kat's too. Our generation will be able to get the choice of CI as an adult and no harm was done, at least not to me.
Thanks again for all your replies and answers. Is anyone else here getting poor aided results above 500Hz? I feel im the only one
