Hi all. Thanks for the great input over the last year while I decided whether to move forward with a Cochlear Implant. My left side hearing was a steep ski slope and I was a borderline candidate at about 40% speech understanding. I decided to take the step now vs. later. I am 60 years old, in good health, still working in a job that requires verbal communication, and my “good ear” is not that great. I worried that if my “good ear” tanked quickly like my left ear did two years ago, I would be unable to work.
I chose Advanced Bionics brand with the Marvel Link Phonak hearing aid for my “good ear”. I got my new HA the day of surgery at Vanderbilt on 11.29.22 and am very pleased with the improvement over my five year old Oticon OPN 1 aids. I was activated two days ago on 12.16.22.
My general feeling at this early point is I have no regrets. I can understand voices although they all sound like Darth Vader. It is amusing, and should normalize with time. I streamed a book I just finished to just my CI and was able to understand every word. My son is an operatic tenor, so I created a playlist of opera arias to listen to the months before surgery so they would be familiar. I tried it today with both ears streaming and am happy to say it was better than I expected. I feel I hear more variety of pitches with the music than with voices at this point. It is certainly different, but I can glimpse how brain plasticity will normalize it over time. I was expecting it to be horrible, so this is all good:)
I am pleased with this as a starting point, and know it will be baby steps over time to an even better result. I think that having residual hearing prior to surgery likely is helpful. Not much was retained post surgery, some may come back in a month or two, but at this point it simplifies matters in that I won’t have to use the acoustic ear piece on my CI.
One thing that I feel may be challenging my speech understanding is that I sense a very slight delay between my hearing aid and the CI. I am told this will settle as will the sense of echo. I wonder if the slight delay is adjustable? I guess I’ll find out at my next mapping. Thanks for the help along the way - I’m sure I will continue to need more!