Second Appointment this Friday Dec 15

[Johnjoe1011]

Ok my second appointment is this Friday December 15. This is where they are going to do the MRI of the head (hope they see a brain ). Then they will do the Cochlear evaluation.

Question for the forum.

First I have tinnitus on the left side. Does the tinnitus goes away after the implant?

Second, I read about Lucia's cochlear moments and i am impressed with her progress. Now me, with my hearing aid i can hear sounds. Like i can hear my steps, the car, the scanning machine at the check out counter in a store etc etc. Of course if I take the Hearing aid off I hear nothing, Nada.

Can anyone here on the forum compare a digital hearing aid with cochlear implant?

Third, with the hearing aid i can hear words and speech but many times i do not undertand them. Will i be able to have better understanding of words with the implant rather than with the hearing aid?

Your input is welcome as right now i am in a discovery mode.

Thanks - JohnJoe

 

[jag]

Can anyone here on the forum compare a digital hearing aid with cochlear implant?

Third, with the hearing aid i can hear words and speech but many times i do not undertand them. Will i be able to have better understanding of words with the implant rather than with the hearing aid?

Your input is welcome as right now i am in a discovery mode.

Thanks - JohnJoe

Hi to answer question 2, I had purchased new digitals a year or so before getting my CI. According to the audiologist who did my testing I 'should' have gotten more benefit from them. There are some people (I guess I'm one of them) who really don't do as good with HA's as they 'should' and they haven't figured out why. Personally I was not satified at all and my hearing loss was only in the severe range.

For question 3, the clarity of speech through a CI is so much better then any HA's I've ever used that I'm very very happy with the risk I took getting an implant. If you already understand speech and are mostly having problems understanding a CI will probably really blow you away. Of course everyone is different so you could possibly struggle, I'm told that my adjustment was very fast, I understood speech right away, everyone is different, even on the first day of activation I carried on conversations with my ENT and an audiologist in that dept whom I am familiar with who was surprised I had qualified for the CI. and I actually heard and understood them better without alot of stress then I did with 2 HA's. I did use the HA in my other ear for a month or 2 and that did help understand what was coming through the CI (IMO) So to answer your question you should be ab le to hear and understand much better with a CI then with a HA....I can even understand my drs when their backs are turned to me and they ask me a question now, previously that would not have happened.

Good luck. Your hearing will improve, the big question is more do you have the patience if you are more the 'norm' and take longer to adjust to it?

 

[TweetyBird]

good lucky!

 

[Hear Again]

Ok my second appointment is this Friday December 15. This is where they are going to do the MRI of the head (hope they see a brain ). Then they will do the Cochlear evaluation.

Question for the forum.

First I have tinnitus on the left side. Does the tinnitus goes away after the implant?

Second, I read about Lucia's cochlear moments and i am impressed with her progress. Now me, with my hearing aid i can hear sounds. Like i can hear my steps, the car, the scanning machine at the check out counter in a store etc etc. Of course if I take the Hearing aid off I hear nothing, Nada.

Can anyone here on the forum compare a digital hearing aid with cochlear implant?

Third, with the hearing aid i can hear words and speech but many times i do not undertand them. Will i be able to have better understanding of words with the implant rather than with the hearing aid?

Your input is welcome as right now i am in a discovery mode.

Thanks - JohnJoe

1. I had mild tinnitus in my left ear prior to my first CI. Following both surgeries, I experienced bilateral tinnitus which I still have to this day. People's experience with tinnitus varies. For some people who had tinnitus pre-CI, their tinnitus completely disappears following surgery. Some people experience tinnitus after surgery which disappears once their CI is activated. Still others (like myself) experience tinnitus 24/7 as a result of CI surgery.

2. I tried digital BTEs in 1996 (Oticon DigiFocus II super power) and they did absolutely nothing to improve my speech discrimination. If anything, they made speech sound distorted and very weak. However, they *did* improve my ability to hear environmental sounds. With digital HAs, I could hear traffic so much better than I could with analogs. When comparing a CI to HAs, there is no comparison...the CI wins hands down! Of course, not everyone experiences the same degree of success with a CI, but if you're struggling to understand speech with HAs at this point (which I gathered from your post), you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Before I received my first CI, I also had some doubts, but am glad I decided to be implanted. It was the best decision I've ever made!

3. It's difficult to predict how well a person will do with a CI. However, let me share my experience. Pre-CI, I had 22% speech understanding (in quiet) and 0% single word understanding with HAs. I'm now able to understand 97% of speech in quiet, 95% of speech in noise and 90% single words with my CIs. I no longer struggle to hear in noisy environments. I can hear with ease thanks to the clarity my CIs provide. I can't remember the last time I was able to hear as well as I do now. If truth be told, I think I hear better now than I ever have before! If I had to do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat!

 

[jag]

I'm now able to understand 97% of speech in quiet, 95% of speech in noise and 90% single words with my CIs. I no longer struggle to hear in noisy environments. I can hear with ease thanks to the clarity my CIs provide. I can't remember the last time I was able to hear as well as I do now. If truth be told, I think I hear better now than I ever have before! If I had to do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat!

Did your hearing in noisy situations become that good after the second implant? I've only got the one and I still struggle in noise (a party in a bar a recent one) while I do test better about 50% vs only hearing one sentence before ci (in noise, I tested at 69% in quiet) I don't have near the success that you do. I jealous. of course I've only had my CI activated since mid may of this year so that may be one reason I'm still not doing that well, or i should say as well as I'd like, tho the increase in understanding in noise is wonderful. I also test well in quiet, and an audiogram puts me in the normal range my ent/surgeon was impressed. so am I.

 

[sr171soars]

Johnjoe,

I had mild tinnitus before my CI. Afterwards, it was gone. I was one of the fortunate ones. There are no guarantees with tinnitus. I will say that a CI will essentially "drown" pretty much all tinnitus if you still have it as it is that powerful.

If you can understand speech with a HA, the odds are good that you will do even better with a CI. It (the CI) has astounding clarity and that is a typical problem (or lack thereof) for many HA users. Again, it just depends on the person but the odds do favor you and they are having more and more successes than in the past. Just keep expectations low...and you may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[LuciaDisturbed]

I've had tinnitus since I was 7 years old. When I got my CI and was activated, about 95% of the tinnitus has gone away and it is very faint when I do have it, but most of the time I either do not notice it or it is just not there.

 

[Hear Again]

Did your hearing in noisy situations become that good after the second implant? I've only got the one and I still struggle in noise (a party in a bar a recent one) while I do test better about 50% vs only hearing one sentence before ci (in noise, I tested at 69% in quiet) I don't have near the success that you do. I jealous. of course I've only had my CI activated since mid may of this year so that may be one reason I'm still not doing that well, or i should say as well as I'd like, tho the increase in understanding in noise is wonderful. I also test well in quiet, and an audiogram puts me in the normal range my ent/surgeon was impressed. so am I.

Jag,

Yes, the improvement I experienced with my ability to hear in noise occurred following the activation of my second CI (6 months post activation).

With my first CI (9 months post activation), I could understand 93% in noise.

With two CIs, I understand 97% (sound booth testing). In real life, my ability to hear in noise is more like 95%, but I'm not complaining. LOL!

In the early days following the activation of my first CI my audi asked me if I thought my blindness (total) had a positive impact on my CI success. I told her that yes, I thought it did. I was born blind, so I've learned how to use my hearing for mobility, communication and activities of daily living. Since all I have to rely on is my hearing, I have nothing to distract me. I can't lipread, so my speech understanding is completely based on what I hear.

I thought my inability to lipread would be a detriment, but that wasn't the case. If anything, my ability to focus entirely on what I was hearing through my CI really made all the difference. We both think my blindness was a real asset when it came to my ability to understand speech and environmental sounds with a CI.

Some people have asked me if it was difficult in the beginning to learn how to identify sounds. I won't lie. It *was* difficult because I couldn't look for the source of a sound. If I heard something, I had to ask a friend or relative what it was. (Sighted CI users need to do this too!) When I wasn't around friends or family, I created sounds of my own and made a day to day journal describing my impressions of what they sounded like so I had a basis of comparison.

Hang in there, Jag! Your speech understanding *will* get better! As I said, I was born blind, so learning how to hear with my CI came naturally. It was really no different than learning how to use my hearing for mobility and daily living. I'm not saying it was easy -- it wasn't -- but it certainly wasn't as difficult as I anticipated!

 

[Kateweb]

Hear Again , how are you able to the fourms so well ? I know that Deaf-Blind assistive tec is not as good as the just blind programs like jaws.

 

[Hear Again]

I use AD's text-only page. This way I avoid graphics. I'm also able to write emoticons such as by writing them in text or selecting them from the drop down menu which also identifies them in text. You're right. Computer access via a screen reader and/or Braille display isn't perfect, but we have come a long way since the early days of Windows! By the way, I've been a computer user since the early 80's. My first computer was an Apple IIe. At the time I used an Echo speech synthesizer and BEX (Braille Edit Express) as a word processor. I now use a PC equipped with JAWS and Window-Eyes (screen reader) and a Braille Star 40 Braille display.

As far as my grammar habits are concerned, I had a very picky 7th grade English teacher who expected all of our T's to be crossed and all of our I's to be dotted so to speak. An "A" paper could easily turn into an "F" if you didn't follow her rules for proper grammar. I know some totally blind and visually impaired computer users who have alot of spelling and grammatical errors in their writing (especially via e-mail). While some of this can't be helped (we all make mistakes ) some people do not use the spell checker -- either because they don't want to -- or because they don't know how. I hope I'm not coming across as if I'm better than other computer users. I'm not. I still have *alot* to learn when it comes to Windows and computers in general. With the rapidly changing pace of technology, there's always something new to learn!