Hi everyone,
I'm new here (this is my first post!) so I hope I'm doing this correctly.
I just recently became deaf -- it's been about 6 or 7 weeks now, I guess. Up til then I wore bi-CROS hearing aids, with my left ear being the one I actually heard things in and the right ("dead") ear just had a transmitter on it. I really loved those hearing aids -- they gave the impression of hearing from both ears and there was a huge difference to me when I had to just wear one hearing aid in my left ear only (i.e., a regular hearing aid instead of the bi-CROS setup).
Anyway, I had this episode of sudden hearing loss (for no explainable reason) and now I'm completely, utterly deaf. I mean, I hear nothing. No loud noises, no speech at all. Well, I hear the tinnitus in my head...LOL! So my beloved hearing aids are now useless.
Anyway, after trying steroids and not getting any hearing back, the doctor recommended that I be evaluated for a CI. Since I was already used to sorta-kinda hearing from both ears with the bi-CROS hearing aids, I asked about bilateral implants. I mean, it's not like I can wear a hearing aid in either ear and get any benefit. (They tried the most powerful hearing aids they had for one of the CI assessment tests and all they did was vibrate my head...eeergh, that was horrible! But no sound.)
I'm at the stage where I'm waiting to see if my insurance company approves the bilateral implants or just chuckles heartily and tosses my approval request back in my lap.
In the meantime, I'm just trying to get as much information as I can about bilateral implants, and also to find out how people came through simultaneous bilateral surgery. (It sounds like more people that are bilateral are getting the implants at different times though.)
I'm really encouraged at what I've been reading about bilaterals! Hopefully someday soon I'll be back posting my own CI experiences.