Live person for 45 minutes per day for about 6 months. Reading words from prescribed word lists while I tried to work out what they were.
Later, moved on to playing notes on a piano.
And then streaming some of those apps listed above but I never found them helpful. Listening to podcasts streamed to the cochlear was much more helpful. But not as good as a live person.
I really don’t know a lot about retinal implants, but I agree that it is a better comparison. That said, it doesn’t look like progress has been as good as with CIs according to wiki:
For some reason the idea of retinal implants gives me the willies far more than a CI.
Had a co-worker who was active duty Air Force and was medically retired for it. He was a consultant to the USAF when I worked with him. Man, I sure wish there was something effective they could do for him. He planned on becoming a school teacher.
WH
I always just think of that scene in First Contact where Picard’s eye gets stabbed by the borg.
I’m liking Neville’s comparison of CI to retinal implant, altho CIs have been around a lot longer. Part of the issue is that both retinal and Cochlear implants involve surgery that’s literally on top of primary sensory nerve bundle. LASIK, while certainly intricate and done on very delicate tissue, is done on a body part that in itself is mostly inert, the cornea/lens of an eye. There are no nerves and no blood vessels.
A retina or a cochlea is almost entirely made of tissue that’s packed with a variety of specialized cells and their specific and specialized nerve endings.not sure about retinas, but I’ve read papers that imply researchers have “tied” specific hair cells to particular brain areas. That’s more intricate than I can wrap my head around.
The other thing that makes me pause about CIs is implantation involves a skilled person (or their robotic equipment) and very sophisticated, miniaturized hardware. No such hardware is involved with LASIK.
All that said, I do wish “they” were progressing faster and further than they seem to be. Maybe the market just isn’t big enough to get the $$. Maybe the trends like this forum toward more consumer inclusion will help.
Well. . . but also. . . what if instead of putting money into progressing CI technology we put money into progressing gene therapy and just make the cochlea regenerate.
I think the latter is, unfortunately, much further off. But it is certainly more desireable. So we split our priorities.
Nightmare worthy. Ugh.
WH
Cataracts? Truly a piece of cake. Results are amazing too.
My mom: Why did I wait so long. It was so easy.
I think she thought it would be long and painful. She was kicking herself for putting it off.
WH
You’re off to be assimilated! I hope it goes well. 
Yes, cataracts. They’ve been mentioned at my last three yearly eye tests. It’s only the last guy who said that you don’t have to wait until they’re a real problem to get them done. Thanks for the positivity. I might stop procrastinating now.
This got me to thinking about my second appointment. Without double checking I believe mine was at a month. Things really started changing for me after the second appointment. At 2 months I knew I would go bilateral and began the process to get that done. At 3 months I did get the second implant.
Your progress has been faster than mine so I would expect you to do every bit as good as I have at least. This may be part of the robot controlled implant too, not sure.
My first month was very frustrating at times because I did not do as well as many I had read about. I really wondered if I had made a huge mistake. Then the second appointment happened and things got better and better.
Something I wanted to ask you to try is streaming an old known TV show to your implant with captions on. This was a night/day learning experience for me.
Loss of residual - my surgeon aid 50/50 and doesn’t seem dependent on surgeon skill. Mine is gone and I had a lot to lose, but it’s OK.
I got mine as soon as I could so I could ditch my glasses - the surgery for both was cheaper than a new pair of glasses. Very pleased. If you have any trouble driving at night, you qualify. It feels much safer now. I’m 61
Thanks Joan. It will be nice to have at least one of my senses fixed.
Honestly, that was part of my argument to the surgeon for moving forward early. I said I was already without one sense, don’t want to be without two. Made sense to him.
@Raudrive, I posted a 6 week update in another thread. I’m curious about what changed with your second appointment. I requested an earlier one (2 weeks after the initial) because I could tell my mapping was off and I was experiencing a very noticeable screech. The MED-EL system uses anatomy based fitting that uses the post op CT scan to measure the exact position of each electrode. When I asked if that had been done, I was told it was not!
In the MED-EL forum others encourage me to make the change now rather than later. Those who waited for 2-4 months found that the change meant they had to start all over again as they had gotten use to the default mapping. After my change to the ABF mapping, the quality of my hearing improved noticeably. Why this was not done right from the beginning is puzzling, because it abandons or as a minimum delays what the manufacturer recommends to do.
So my conclusion is you should never just assume things are the best they can be. If something doesn’t match what you were expecting, ask questions.
I really don’t know the specific answer to your question. What did happen is after word and sentence understanding tests he made some changes based on what I did and did not understand. He also cranked the volume up substantially. These changes helped immediately in the office. That’s when my speech understanding started really going up over the next month or so.
Did you get the scan? I noticed you got the AFB mappings.
I totally agree with aggressive mappings early on.
It’s a loud world we live in and we need to acclimate.
Thanks for getting back about your progress.
The scan is available on the hospital’s MyChart, but I am no clinician and not able to know what I am looking at. I have asked to see the otoplan with the actual placement. Want to be assured there was no translocation during insertion. Still looking for an explanation of the hearing loss from outside sound, but ample hearing for sound produced inside my head.
The audi set 4 volume settings in the SP and I have gone to level 3 and even there cut back on the volume control for now.