Bad News - Denied for CI

Well it don't look like you are right in the head obviously...

Look at what the others posted and L E A R N and A P P R E C I A T E what residual hearing you have !!!
 
Phi4Sius said:
If you don't believe me, here is MY official audiogram:

http://i828.photobucket.com/albums/zz201/phi4sius/audiogram1a.jpg

Quite honestly, you can go to hell. I don't really care what you think. You can think I'm lying all to hell if you want to, but it doesn't change my condition.



If I had the money, I'd gladly spend it out of pocket to avoid having to go through this BS of fighting with insurance and I'd probably be able to have my surgery done this or next weekend. But, I don't so I HAVE to go through insurance.



I'm not right in the head? EXCUSE me? I've lived with this my whole life - since I was 4 years old (I'm 29 now) - and there's finally a treatment for it and I intend to take full advantage of it. You want to get hostile, go ahead. I certainly didn't do anything to you.
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If I had money or insurance approval, I would get an second implant. My speech recognition with CI is far worst than yours without CI. What you are doing is cosmetic to me.
 
Phi4sius,

Sorry you were denied. Has your audi given you any suggestions for other things you can try? Do they even know if the nerve can be stimulated for left ear? I would want to get these questions answered. Hang in there, part of getting a CI is patience.
 
AlleyCat said:
I scored absolutely 0% without HAs. My scores were better only with HAs. I'm thinking 72% in Phi's case unaided is just too high for a CI, so this is no surprise to me. Do you have a progressive loss and expect your scores to go down later? If so, then you might be a good candidate at that time.
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Same here..scored 0% with HAs. 72% is not bad at all.
 
South Fella: Well it don't look like you are right in the head obviously...

Look at what the others posted and L E A R N and A P P R E C I A T E what residual hearing you have !!!
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I have no residual hearing in my left ear, so there is nothing left to appreciate there. If I had enough residual hearing there that could be helped by a hearing aid, I'd gladly get one.

Lighthouse 77: If I had money or insurance approval, I would get an second implant. My speech recognition with CI is far worst than yours without CI. What you are doing is cosmetic to me.
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I have zero % recognition out of my left ear, and it can't benefit from hearing aids at all. I've already tried. The hearing aid I got (powerful enough to fit profound losses) only provided tactile responses (vibrations), which are of no use. I would love to get bi lateral implants but at the same time I don't want to compromise the residual hearing that I do have in my right ear.

Set 2: Phi4sius,

Sorry you were denied. Has your audi given you any suggestions for other things you can try? Do they even know if the nerve can be stimulated for left ear? I would want to get these questions answered. Hang in there, part of getting a CI is patience.
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Thank you Set. I have plenty of options for appeal, and I've already emailed both the doc for appeal and the AB insurance department to help with the appeal. Part of the actual evaluation for the CI involves a CT Scan and an ABST (auditory brain stem test) to help determine whether or not the nerve really can be stimulated.

Moon-child, shel90 - Thanks a bunch!
 
Let me defend Phi4Sius. He is certainly allowed to try the process for CI candidacy, especially since he wants it in the dead ear. Ill also defend him that ive seen some people with much more unreasonable requests for CI. They have way too much residual hearing in both ears, yet still want CI and some of them have actually been approved after several appeals. One lady has hearing starting at 60db at 250Hz sloping downwards. She never posted her audiogram and refuses to do so, probably because alot of people would be upset. She did say she hears worse in the low frequencies with CI and that she was hearing 15db with HAs.

Many "borderline" candidates such as her should/could be getting alot more benefit if they would make more effort to try better HAs or get their current HAs reprogrammed like I did. I refused to give up and after 3 months, my HA is reprogrammed and I hear per the audiogram in my sig. Im sure people won't believe that I hear 5-10db in the low frequencies but I hear those sounds at a greater distance than my mom, dad, bro who are all hearing. My mom was surprised that I heard faint thunder that she sometimes couldn't hear! I also heard a plane from far away that she never heard!

So yea it upsets me when anyone with equal or better hearing than me doesn't put a serious effort into getting the right HAs with the right programming. They also need to train their brains more and then their ability to understand speech will greatly improve. I am constantly scoring in the 90%'s on a close-set online speech test and this is in fact the same score(or almost as good) as what my friends with CIs are scoring. I would only get CI for myself if my hearing got alot worse.

Phi4sius is leaving the good ear alone, he wants a CI in the dead ear. He already tried the best HAs in the dead ear and just feels vibrotactile stimulus.(Dreama, those HAs could be for you!) he knows there's no residual hearing to risk in the dead ear. Yes there's a risk he will hear worse with CI vs. HA in the good ear but I believe his goal is to simply hear with two ears and be able to tell the direction of sound. I will let him further explain his reasons but ill say that I respect his choice way more than the choice others with more residual hearing than me made to get CIs.
 
deafdude1 said:
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Phi4sius is leaving the good ear alone, he wants a CI in the dead ear. He already tried the best HAs in the dead ear and just feels vibrotactile stimulus.(Dreama, those HAs could be for you!) he knows there's no residual hearing to risk in the dead ear. Yes there's a risk he will hear worse with CI vs. HA in the good ear but I believe his goal is to simply hear with two ears and be able to tell the direction of sound. I will let him further explain his reasons but ill say that I respect his choice way more than the choice others with more residual hearing than me made to get CIs.
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That is fine in of itself and nobody is having a problem with that. The big deal is that if one is going to attempt to get a CI via insurance (when others are footing the bill) then one gotta play the game based on the rules. What one wants to do is irrelevant. Maybe he will find a center that will do a CI on him. But with decent enough hearing in his good ear, it will difficult to find that opportunity.

If P4S has the bucks, then he can do a CI on his terms. Maybe that doesn't seem fair and etc. but the fact remains true for many other things in life as well.
 
ighthouse 77: If I had money or insurance approval, I would get an second implant. My speech recognition with CI is far worst than yours without CI. What you are doing is cosmetic to me.
I have zero % recognition out of my left ear, and it can't benefit from hearing aids at all. I've already tried. The hearing aid I got (powerful enough to fit profound losses) only provided tactile responses (vibrations), which are of no use. I would love to get bi lateral implants but at the same time I don't want to compromise the residual hearing that I do have in my right ear.
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I'm talking about speech recognition in general. Not how much you can hear with your deaf ear. I am relying on ONE ear and that is my implanted ear and that alone is not good compare to your good ear.

listen, i am not against you being implanted... i'm against our insurance rates going up and lack of funding because they wasted it on implanting everyone who don't really need it.

it's like this: a person set up a food drive for the poor. Some middle class comes along and says, I'm not poor, but broke because of bills (cellphone, house, water, etc.). I do have some food in my house in stock, but I just want to get more food because I like three big meals a day. They say", sure, take what you need." So he took what he need. here comes along a truly poor person. His children who haven't had a decent meal for a while. he noticed that the food drive don't have any food at all so he has no choice but wait longer. He became worst off than ever because the food drive won't set limits.
 
I would not even want a CI. A CI is for the last resort. I had 1% in right ear and 17% in left. Hearing aids are useless
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vallee, agreed!
Phi, I can see both sides here...... I mean yeah you do have a dead ear where NO hearing aid can help. Nothing wrong with wanting a ci in that case. However, it does seem kind of ....overkill. You want CI simply to localize sound right? The ci is very expensive for the insurance company, for relatively mild benifit....you know?
. You can function pretty well with a HA, except for not localizing sound right?
 
deafdyke- In one on one situations, yes. TV (without captions), forget it. Social group situations, forget it unless they're all on the same side as my hearing ear. Any situation with multiple people that I can't focus on for lipreading or anything- I can barely get by. Echoey environments - I can't make out anything.

I tried forever to get my last digitals to sound like my old analog, to no avail. I finally went back to analog linear processing because then I could finally get all the high frequency/low/mids that I was missing because of wearing digitals. I finally got an independent answer from the audiologist who did the audiogram above that digital hearing aids would never do anything for me anyways because of my loss.

I'm sorry for those who believe it's wrong. But after living with this my whole life and trying so many different devices without success, and finally there is something that has proven successful on a good number of people, it's NOT WRONG to want to take advantage of it and go after it.

I could see where there would be a concern about me getting my left ear implanted if I hadn't ever tried anything for my left ear, or never tried something different to improve my hearing. But, I have because I believe that it's not a good idea to go after cochlear implantation until after you have determined that other devices won't help at all. Now that I've determined that for my left ear, I at least know for a fact that no hearing aid in existence will ever help me there because there is no residual hearing to amplify.
 
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I would be willing to say even with money, the surgeon can turn him down.

Make sure they include a psycho test in there too Phil4s....

As long as his speech recognition score is above a certain percentage, he don't need a CI.
 
SouthFella- All right, then sir - put your money where your mouth is. You have a hearing aid in your left ear which has clearly helped YOU with speech before you got your CI. Same situation as me - except mine is on my right ear. Show us your audiogram and provide us with your own audiogram scores so that we can judge the validity of your argument (which doesn't hold water as it is). Sounds like you're just arguing for the sake of arguing, without any merit. Most arguments like this don't hold water.

Otherwise, stop trolling my thread and being a bitter jackass. Because I'm getting a CI for my left ear, whether you give a crap about it or not. This will be my last response to your trolling. Good day to you sir.
 
I don't blame you for wanting to get the dead ear implanted. I'm the same way. Except I'm within the CI candidacy criteria so I can get the implant in either ear (but I'll do it in my left dead ear as I want sound in both ears). It's a shame they won't even consider the dead ear for you.
 
cdmeggers - Well, I don't know 100% for sure yet. I certainly got the rejection letter, but I think they believe that I'm trying to get my right ear implanted (the hearing aid ear), because I thought they would immediately realize that I was trying to get my left ear implanted and that I want to save the existing residual hearing in my right ear.

I've emailed them that clarification as well as the insurance department at AB. Hopefully I'll know more on Monday.
 
yeah hopefully they understand your wanting to do the dead ear and not the good ear. I'm wanting to leave my good ear alone too.
 
Phi.......maybe also tell the insurance company that beyond one on one situtions, you're really struggling. Emphisize that you're not going all "AG Bell" gotta have the latest device/ falling for the "CI hype" (and before I get attacked, while I think the CI is an awesome awesome device, and I would strongly reccomend it for anyone who'd maxed out their hearing aids, I do think that SOME people have been ......well remember when digital aids were THE next Best Thing? It's exactly like that with CI)
Maybe you could have your audi attest that you HAVE tried every other device on the market. I have to say it didn't surprise me that you got rejected. I actually think that there may have been a bulge of people who went all "AG Bell" since they loosened the canidacy requirements for CI. Like maybe people who got quite a bit of benifit from HAs, but who got their audis to kind of grease the skids b/c they thought that a CI totally overcame all the disadvantages of being hoh)
Hey.......are you primarily oral? THAT might help grease the skids a bit. You could argue that you have no asl/sign skills to fall back on so you're at a HUGE disadvantage.
Maybe a good idea might be to learn ASL so that you have that as a skill. I think you're mostly experiancing the disadvantages of being hoh.....virtually all hoh folks experiance the disadvantages you're experiancing.
 
Phi I worry about one thing, the CI ear tends to become the better ear. You might not be able to have as much use out of your "good" ear. It might be more damaging to that ear in sound. I do not want you to become frustrated.
 
deafdude1 said:
. One lady has hearing starting at 60db at 250Hz sloping downwards.
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his is what Miss Kat had. So what? She was getting very low speech recognition scores. THAT is the key. What good is hearing tones in a booth if you can't use the hearing in real life.
 
So what? Leave him alone, he want it in dead ear, and if its better than his aided hearing, what's so bad about it? It'd be awesome and he still can use his residual hearing for some low frequency that ci might not cover, and he can hear in other frequencies as well so it won't become useless just different.
He struggles in anything above 1 on 1 convo in quiet situation, that alone is good enough for him to get CI and I'd say keep pushing it, get LTHF to fight for you against insurance, they have 100% success rate (last I've heard was last year so let me know if its different this year)
 
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