getting used to c.i question

Yeah, actually i became deaf when i was 7 so that would be 1979,same year you was born.I became deaf from meningitis which come super close to killing me.bw hearings aids old would prob explain why i never heard of them
 
Seen something on the news tonite about the freedom c.i.,they say it automatically adjusts sound for noisy and quiet environments,that is the holy grail of h/a and c.i 's .May not be as good as it sounds in practice though
 
McGusto: Since the Freedom is still new, it may take awhile to find out what CI users think about its new features. I'm particularly interested in the Smart Beam directional microphones. I'm curious to know how well they help people hear in noise.
 
well for me i'm only wearing freedom for more than a week.. and i can't tell how much i liked it. but the smart beam seems not a big difference to me.. i guess i'm still too new for this.
even the auto sensitve and volume.. it doesn't really help me that much yet. i'm just tring one program allday then the next all day.. to see whats the difference.. its still to hard or i dunno :-/
 
DeafSCUBA98: You're right. At only a week post activation, it's too early to understand what you are hearing. It took me 3 weeks before I was able to understand some speech and 4 months before I was able to understand most conversation in quiet and in noise.

My audiologist reminded me that even at 4 months post activation I'm still in the process of learning how to hear with my CI.

One thing I can guarantee you is that it gets better with time! You may notice subtle sound changes one day but not the next. When my audi told me that the sound quality of what I heard would get better over time, I found it hard to believe until it actually happened. :)

Spending a day using each program is a good idea. I know some CI users who switch programs on an hourly basis and then wonder why they don't become used to what they are hearing.

My audiologist started me with ACE at 900 Hz and told me to continue using that program until I needed a new map. She said that putting different speech strategies (i.e. ACE, SPEAK, CIS) on my processor would make it more difficult for me to become used to one program.

At my second mapping my audiologist switched me to ACE at 1200 Hz, but I couldn't make sense of anything I heard. This reminds me -- when you go for a mapping, make sure your audiologist always keeps an older map on your processor. That way, if you're having problems with a new map, you always have an older map to go back to. (I wish someone would have given me this advice before my 2nd mapping when I lost all of my speech discrimination. Now I know better. :) )

I've been using ACE at 900 Hz since my activation day and so far, it seems to be working really well for me. You'll have to experiment to find out what program/speech strategy works best for you.

Hang in there! It *will* get better! :)
 
yeah for the 1st month or so i thought that i was not going to be able to understand speech and all iwas ever going to hear was these pulsing sounds but it eventually worked out even though it could be better.Lucky i didn't have high expectations and buy into the hype
 
Mc Gusto said:
yeah for the 1st month or so i thought that i was not going to be able to understand speech and all iwas ever going to hear was these pulsing sounds but it eventually worked out even though it could be better.Lucky i didn't have high expectations and buy into the hype
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McGusto: Yeah...It's easy for people to fall into the trap of believing everything they read about CIs -- good or bad. In my case, when people told me they could understand close to 100% of conversation in a noisy restaurant I bought into it and thought I would be able to do the same thing. At this point, my speech understanding with a CI is closer to 70-80% and for whatever reason, when I turn down my sensitivity setting, I have more difficulty hearing because it also dampens the voice of the person/people I'm trying to hear.

It's important that anyone considering a CI do as much research as they can about the various devices and what features they offer. More importantly, talk to people in your area (perhaps at a SHHH meeting or other local organization for the deaf/hoh) who have CIs so you can find out for yourself how well they are doing with their implants. Too many people end up disappointed with their CIs because they expect too much too fast. If they don't understand speech the day their implant is turned on, they think something is wrong with their CI and consider it a failure. :(

I went into my activation with very low expectations. In fact, I told myself not to expect that I would hear or understand *anything* with my CI. Because of these low expectations, I was able to approach my activation day with a feeling of curiosity at *any* new sound I heard regardless of how strange it was. :)

Learning how to hear with a CI takes time and patience. This is one of the reasons why audiologists constantly tell perspective CI candidates to have "high hopes with low expectations."
 
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