zebadee2010, even normal hearing people don't hear well in noisy situation so do not get discouraged.
I have 90 db loss in both ears, I was born normal hearing,I'm 35 now and started losing my hearing 10 years back and it got pretty bad in a year or so, I have been wearing hearing aids (HA) ever since that time and I do understand lip reading with sounds of course, I hear pretty good with my HA if I'm in a small group (2-4 people) or 1-1, I get lost with bigger group and if everyone is talking from every side, i can use phone and do a lot of business on phone (use a special headset for hearing aids or bluetooth for HA, my brain is pretty programmed on sounds and as per the dr I spoke with today (2nd opinion) he recommended that I do it soon and not wait 2 years otherwise my brain starts losing it, he is expecting me to do very well since my brain is already stimulated, but you never know. My fear is that I have already changed my career once (when my hearing started going down after spending years in college and get my wow degree) I can't afford losing my current career at this point when I'm not 22-25 anymore, I'm afraid of losing my ability to use the phone if I go with the CI, this my major challenge, plus I did try to use one HA to see how I do and it was not good, I have to have my both HA on to function right, so basically, if the CI does not work for me, I'm done, that's why all the research and the fear.
I know your results are amazing and we should not compare ourselves to you, but as how I research it: it's not about the ear, it's about your brain, the auditory cortex that covers the brain and how stimulated it is, if you were born deaf or very hard of hearing and have not stimulated your hearing with hearing aids or your regular ears, then that area will be doing something else, not for hearing, however if you keep stimulating the cortex with sounds and try your best (if you wear HA) to figure out what that sound is, a bird singing, a spoon hitting the side of the cup, the sound of the keys in the door knob ...., these explanations are very important for your cortex and brain, that's why CI results vary from a person to person, the way how your brain is developed to hear sounds and how to explain them back to you, so if the person never heard the sound of a key in a door knob, he may take time to understand it and may never can get grab of it after he gets a CI, but if a person is already heard it, knows what is it and have not been away so long from hearing it, then he will remember it when he gets the CI, that's why you are doing so good now, HOWEVER: you are having major problem with noise at this point because you were only deaf for 2 months, you will need a lot of time to grasp on mixing noise with other sounds, a thing that is a piece of cake for us, hard of hearing people
and this is OUR advantage on YOU, I was in your shoe when I wore my first HA 10 years back, I was going crazy after months of less hearing and out of sudden sounds were so high that I was going to scream, noises were all mixed, my brain could not separate the sounds, but after several years, I could separate them easily and I can say that this is a blessing for us, probably the only blessing we have, don't worry, you will get there but make sure to relax when it's too noisy and don't let it distract you from separating sounds, practice
