deafdyke- I was able to choose which ear I had implanted. I decided to go with the ear that could still understand speech.
It was a hard decision but with my neuroscience background, I knew that the neural pathways for hearing were well established in my right ear, whereas my left ear was much less useful.
There was significant risk in implanting my "good" ear but so far the input from my cochlear implant is so much better than anything I had from hearing aids. I can actually hear fine details of sound without being overwhelmed by 100+dB amplification. The cochlear implant does exactly what it is supposed to do, it stimulates the tonotopically appropriate areas of my cochlea for each sound and can even replicate chords and music (something I wasn't expecting before surgery).
Sometimes I get "tired" of hearing with my CI and decide to take it off but I usually put it back on because in my words "I can't hear a damn thing without this!".
When I wore 2 ultra power BTE hearing aids, I would remove them as soon as I was away from people because the constant amplification caused tinnitus that lasted hours. After a day at work with my UP BTEs, I could not function if I needed to hear. Now, instead of pointing a giant speaker at a cochlea that has few hair cells and praying that the hair cells are able to discern all the complexities of speech, there is an electrode that excites the correct places of my spiral ganglia in the order and intensity required to elicit a sound.
Sounds are so much more comfortable. For people with profound sensorineural hearing loss (I'm talking about thresholds that start at the "best" frequency at 90+dB and are never higher than 90dB (usually 110+dB)), hearing aids just make noise louder. I couldn't tell the difference between my husband's voice and noise unless I saw him speaking.
Now, he can talk to me from the next room and at the very least, I know he is talking to me.
I can usually understand what he is saying.
You can look at my profile pic to see my pre-implant audiogram. It was basically 100db in the bass an 120+ everywhere else. With Phonak's strongest hearing aids I was able to hear in the 40-60dB range for bass sounds and 90+ dB for kids and high pitches.
CIs are still a tricky subject but with just over one month of CI hearing in my right ear, I'm hearing what people with "very mild" hearing loss can hear (in a soundproof booth). It is still lightyears ahead of what I heard with hearing aids.
