Not a candidate for CI?

drphil said:
dereksbicycles. Did you consider using VCO (voice carry over) TTY phone? Assuming you speak. My TTY is Ultra Tec 1140 which I still use after 15 years. My Implant doesn't pickup people speaking but can hear the dial tone. Some people can hear some can't- regular phones with their Implants.

Can you access the Relay service in Illinois?
Using telephones is something one considers re Hearing Aid/Cochlear Implants.

Many comments for you to consider-so far.

Implanted A B Harmony activated Aug/07
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Yeah, if I do develop speech skills with HA later on, that would be sufficient enough for me to use VCO phone.
 
posts from hell said:
I use the VRS, and its been great for me.

Why don't you do a survey of CI users - ask how many use the phone, and how easy it is?

The other thing to think about - if you're fine with depending on your girlfriend - why aren't you fine with using VRS/TRS?
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I have a VP 200, but I rarely use it. I prefer using siprelay. Relay phones are ok, but I would want to at least be able to use VCO or even voice phone so that I don't have to rely on my girlfriend every time.
 
dereksbicycles said:
I am in USA. Evanston, IL to be exact.

I have almost no speech skills, if any.

I did have an HOH girlfriend at one time who used VCO. I now have a hearing girlfriend who loves to be my "hearing ears" for me. However, it would be nice for me to use phone myself. Not rely on texts and relay phones.
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dereksbicycles, your hearing loss was like mine, 90db in both ears, I was born normal hearing and lost my hearing fast 12 years back, I'm 35, I used Oticon agile HA and have used oticon since I lost my hearing, I could use the phone with Nokia loopsets (excellent quality) and Hatis headsets (so so, break easily) and finally when I got latest Oticon HA I got the bluetooth ones and was able to use the streamer that connect wirelessly with your HA and phone (iphone) and I can use the phone this way and do pretty amazing, I talk to my clients perfectly, I know at the level of my haring loss I may be should not hear over the phone this good, but remember I have pushed myself so hard on those 10 years to use every technology I could ever use, I work in multi millions company at top position and manage good numbers of staff, I had no option but push myself, I truly believe that one can pushed himself to train whatever cells are there in his ears and NEVER say never, my hearing loss is a slop type and way down where the banana is, anyway I was shocked when my audi told me that I was a candidate for the CI last March, I thought the CI is only for DEAF people and I was shocked to learn that these rules changed and they started to consider people with 70db loss as long as their speech tests show 40% or less, mine was like 22-28%, it took me a month to accept this fact, I was communicating good with 2-5 people at time, use the phone on my cell phone mostly as office phones drove me crazy, and brought millions $$ to the company, but then at that time I re-evaluated my life and noticed that it did really affected my social life and I was going away slowly from my older friends and my far family, I was working so my at work to cover up things, I decided to get the CI and got refused by my insurance, and then by Nov last year I was approved and had my CI surgery March.22nd this year, got activated on April.7th (a week back), I'm doing great, it's very noisy and I need to accept this fact coming from 90db loss and a digital HA that scanned out all the noise to understand speech I have to let my brain to accept all these sounds that I'm hearing now, background noise like AC or even the clicks of the computer keys are so high, all mixed up with the speech (I put the TV on to train my brain), it's hard to understand things when there are so much noise but my brain needs to get all of this and then scan it out by itself, it will take time.
Now having said the above and seeing you having same loss as mine and seeing you not as motivated as me, I strongly advise you to stay on this board and communicate with us for 6-12 months and slowly absorb things and then re-evaluate if you want the CI or not, you can not do it now since you said you do not want the birds and other people talking down the street, you can not select the sounds you want with the CI, you have to get all of this like normal hearing people or forget about it, you have to work very hard with your brain and push yourself to accept it and move on with it and keep working on it for YEARS, it's not a selective process, you have to get all or NONE, I'm sorry to be brutally honest but you do need to a lot of research, many of them are within your soul and if you want this or not, you still good with HA but check again if your social life and your career is affected, think about the future (not sure how old are you now), remember that the older you get the CI the harder on your brain to get it, so if you are in your 20s, 30s, please get it ASAP, as once you get to your 50s your results will not be as good as when you are younger, it's all depend on the brain, the longer the brain is not hearing sounds the more it will push it to use the hearing area for something else
Good luck
 
Fl885 said:
dereksbicycles, your hearing loss was like mine, 90db in both ears, I was born normal hearing and lost my hearing fast 12 years back, I'm 35, I used Oticon agile HA and have used oticon since I lost my hearing, I could use the phone with Nokia loopsets (excellent quality) and Hatis headsets (so so, break easily) and finally when I got latest Oticon HA I got the bluetooth ones and was able to use the streamer that connect wirelessly with your HA and phone (iphone) and I can use the phone this way and do pretty amazing, I talk to my clients perfectly, I know at the level of my haring loss I may be should not hear over the phone this good, but remember I have pushed myself so hard on those 10 years to use every technology I could ever use, I work in multi millions company at top position and manage good numbers of staff, I had no option but push myself, I truly believe that one can pushed himself to train whatever cells are there in his ears and NEVER say never, my hearing loss is a slop type and way down where the banana is, anyway I was shocked when my audi told me that I was a candidate for the CI last March, I thought the CI is only for DEAF people and I was shocked to learn that these rules changed and they started to consider people with 70db loss as long as their speech tests show 40% or less, mine was like 22-28%, it took me a month to accept this fact, I was communicating good with 2-5 people at time, use the phone on my cell phone mostly as office phones drove me crazy, and brought millions $$ to the company, but then at that time I re-evaluated my life and noticed that it did really affected my social life and I was going away slowly from my older friends and my far family, I was working so my at work to cover up things, I decided to get the CI and got refused by my insurance, and then by Nov last year I was approved and had my CI surgery March.22nd this year, got activated on April.7th (a week back), I'm doing great, it's very noisy and I need to accept this fact coming from 90db loss and a digital HA that scanned out all the noise to understand speech I have to let my brain to accept all these sounds that I'm hearing now, background noise like AC or even the clicks of the computer keys are so high, all mixed up with the speech (I put the TV on to train my brain), it's hard to understand things when there are so much noise but my brain needs to get all of this and then scan it out by itself, it will take time.
Now having said the above and seeing you having same loss as mine and seeing you not as motivated as me, I strongly advise you to stay on this board and communicate with us for 6-12 months and slowly absorb things and then re-evaluate if you want the CI or not, you can not do it now since you said you do not want the birds and other people talking down the street, you can not select the sounds you want with the CI, you have to get all of this like normal hearing people or forget about it, you have to work very hard with your brain and push yourself to accept it and move on with it and keep working on it for YEARS, it's not a selective process, you have to get all or NONE, I'm sorry to be brutally honest but you do need to a lot of research, many of them are within your soul and if you want this or not, you still good with HA but check again if your social life and your career is affected, think about the future (not sure how old are you now), remember that the older you get the CI the harder on your brain to get it, so if you are in your 20s, 30s, please get it ASAP, as once you get to your 50s your results will not be as good as when you are younger, it's all depend on the brain, the longer the brain is not hearing sounds the more it will push it to use the hearing area for something else
Good luck
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Thank you very much for your input. I appreciate it. I am 33 right now. I will be 34 this month. Also, I lost my hearing at 1 years old. No rush for me to get CI. I have my whole life ahead. Will like to explore HA options and go from there.
 
dereksbicycles, just forgot to mention that My Dr. (Dr. Niparko at John Hopkins, who is the BEST in preserving residual hearing with CI surgery in USA) mentioned something for me last Feb when I called him wondering if I should do the CI or not, I was afraid that I may lose my ability on using the phone, he told me that the longer I wait, the less good effects I get from the CI, Dr. Niparko have done so much research on the CI and have over 400 pages of a book on the CI, I traveled from CA to Baltimore to have him operate on me and I traveled again for activation and will travel again for one month follow up ( I will let you know if my residual hearing somehow preserved few months from now as it's early to test it at this time), I wish you the best, stay here with us for support and some good laugh :), I would not have been were I'm here without the good people on this board, do what you think it's good for you, if you want to stay hard of hearing so who cares as long as you love your life and you are good with whatever you've got (I was not, LOL. I wanted to hear more, I wanted to enjoy social life more, I wanted to go our with my friends and hear everything, I want to keep traveling the world and learn some other languages, knew I can not do this with HA :()
There is no rush, take your time :)
 
dereksbicycles said:
I have a VP 200, but I rarely use it. I prefer using siprelay. Relay phones are ok, but I would want to at least be able to use VCO or even voice phone so that I don't have to rely on my girlfriend every time.
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Check into a CapTel telephone. It is a captioned telephone so that you can talk into it and the relay operator types back in real time what is said back to you. I use this and I am total deaf.

CapTel - The Captioned Telephone | Hearing Loss, Hard of Hearing, Phones, Captioning, Phone Captions
 
posts from hell said:
I use the VRS, and its been great for me.

Why don't you do a survey of CI users - ask how many use the phone, and how easy it is?

The other thing to think about - if you're fine with depending on your girlfriend - why aren't you fine with using VRS/TRS?
Click to expand...

Did you do one? What was the outcome? Just curious.
 
AlleyCat said:
Did you do one? What was the outcome? Just curious.
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Why should I do a survey that does not pertain to me?

Although from personal observation - I have already formed my opinion. Please take note I haven't suggested my opinion on this matter.

But hey, one can take a look at this thread and reach to the same conclusion I have.
 
KristinaB said:
Check into a CapTel telephone. It is a captioned telephone so that you can talk into it and the relay operator types back in real time what is said back to you. I use this and I am total deaf.

CapTel - The Captioned Telephone | Hearing Loss, Hard of Hearing, Phones, Captioning, Phone Captions
Click to expand...

Thank you for the link. I understand that you are totally deaf, but do you have any speech skills? I think that would be required for this phone. If given choice, I would rather have HA and learn speech so that I can use CAP TEL than to get CI and learn to use voice phone. I am sure CI is great for some people, but I don't think I will want to pursue that right now.
 
dereksbicycles said:
Thank you for the link. I understand that you are totally deaf, but do you have any speech skills? I think that would be required for this phone. If given choice, I would rather have HA and learn speech so that I can use CAP TEL than to get CI and learn to use voice phone. I am sure CI is great for some people, but I don't think I will want to pursue that right now.
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KristinaB is late-deafened. So she already has speech.
 
dereksbicycles said:
Thank you for the link. I understand that you are totally deaf, but do you have any speech skills? I think that would be required for this phone. If given choice, I would rather have HA and learn speech so that I can use CAP TEL than to get CI and learn to use voice phone. I am sure CI is great for some people, but I don't think I will want to pursue that right now.
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AlleyCat said:
KristinaB is late-deafened. So she already has speech.
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As AlleyCat says, I am late-deafened. I was born hard of hearing and was 42 when I lost all hearing. I have very good speech, or so I am told. My mother was quite adamant that my father, brothers and I all used good clear diction so even though I was 3-4 before talking, I had clear speech. I had a HA from ages 7-10 and from ages 38 (or so) to 41. Both my kids should be wearing bi-lateral hearing aids, but refuse to do so and I am not pushing them to do so. They are teens and can make their own decision about that.
 
drphil said:
I believe that a loss of 90 DB is "Profound" which is the highest loss classification but NOT deaf. With appropriate aid one can "hear somewhat" Deafness is 105.db
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Just saying, if his loss is profound, then that makes him profoundly DEAF. Total deafness is 105, yes, but you can be deaf and still have a little hearing. Just thought I'd throw that out there. My loss is severe-profound, but I choose to introduce myself as deaf, even though I can hear decently with hearing aids.

Also, OP, if you lost your speech at when you were only a year old, now that you are in your 30s, it will be much harder to gain speech skills. I'm not saying it'll be impossible, but it will be harder. Even if you got CI, your speech might not be as good as you want it to be. Don't set your expectations too high!
 
I am not a candidate for CI nor do I have any desire for CI.
 
natty 4ever:I define deafness as silence which can easily be ascertained and "noted" as 105 db. This occurred to me and from my experience "easy to define".

However the label "deafness" appears to have many permutations=profound/total etc which doesn't lead to clarity-unfortunately.

Probably self definition-"cultural" vs physical/pathological condition.

Implanted A B Harmony activated Aug/07
 
Another constructive issue to ponder. Is that unless he has a little hearing without even wearing hearing aids is the auditory input he has received the last 20+ years or so.

That even if he has a desire to hear better somewhere down the road (i.e. it doesn't necessarily have to be just CI's, it could also be other science or technology developments, tools or aids), taking the little more gradual approach might be a little more beneficial. Otherwise, going straight from not getting any auditory input for a long time straight to the CI might be a little more overwhelming.

Cause I do have a profoundly deaf friend that had just decided to give hearing aids a try recently after not wearing them for about 20+ years, getting hardly any auditory input in the process. But gave them up within a short time frame cause "of all that background noise...". I had to tell him that he'd probably hear even more background noises with a CI than he would with an hearing aid.
 
Hohtopics said:
Another constructive issue to ponder. Is that unless he has a little hearing without even wearing hearing aids is the auditory input he has received the last 20+ years or so.

That even if he has a desire to hear better somewhere down the road (i.e. it doesn't necessarily have to be just CI's, it could also be other science or technology developments, tools or aids), taking the little more gradual approach might be a little more beneficial. Otherwise, going straight from not getting any auditory input for a long time straight to the CI might be a little more overwhelming.

Cause I do have a profoundly deaf friend that had just decided to give hearing aids a try recently after not wearing them for about 20+ years, getting hardly any auditory input in the process. But gave them up within a short time frame cause "of all that background noise...". I had to tell him that he'd probably hear even more background noises with a CI than he would with an hearing aid.
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Thank you for your feedback. WHere does your friend stand on HA/CI? What has he/she decided for the future?
 
dereksbicycles said:
Thank you for your feedback. WHere does your friend stand on HA/CI? What has he/she decided for the future?
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That's a good question. He also has other medical issues going on so understandably he's kind of being sidetracked with it at the moment. And I won't bring it up again unless he does.

He also happens to be friend from a distance whereas we used to live close to one another but currently lives far away from me. So, it's not like we see each other on a regular basis or something. We mostly just occasionally keep in touch through the net.

For starters, he does have more of an hearing loss than you do. His is like 100+ or something.

If I were you, I'd at least look into getting some auditory input of some kind. And that if you have some concerns that a CI would be too much too soon and that it also involves surgery and all that. You could start with an HA. Sometime it's good to start with something small and build on from there.

And lastly, the HA's are better now than they were 20+ years ago.

Again, good luck! Although let me know if you have any more questions.
 
Everyone keeps saying to try HAs first before CI. I thought the audiologists MADE you try HAs for a certain period of time before you can get CI. Does that apply only to children or something?
 
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