The last time I spoke with my audie (last Novemer) he mentioned that Cochlear would be making the Freedom BTE processor compatible with older implants. Although you won't get the full dynamic range of the Freedom (having the older implant in place,) the advantage from the better software should be noticable from what he told me. Talk to your audie, I'm not sure when the older-implant-compatible model will be ready (it might already be.)
You could always give it a try - you really have nothing to loose, and you might be surprised.