Good luck tomorrow with your CI surgery.
When you are up to posting, let us know how you are doing.
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Good morning.
How did your surgery go?
Did you get an activation date?
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@ibawaya i hope everything went well for you, and your not in a lot of pain today.
Thinking of you.
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Thank you so much! I did have some pain the first day but the pain medicine took care of it. I’ve had very little pain since, and I got home two days ago. I had surgery in Seattle by Chad Ruffin, MD, and I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I am feeling pretty normal except for a plugged ear. My activation is July 15. My surgeon thinks it is likely we saved the residual hearing, something I really wanted. I know I may lose it in the future.
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Everything went well! I am home now and healing and waiting for the activation on July 15.
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Thank you! I really appreciate the support!
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Congratulations @ibawaya. Very glad to hear all went well for you. That plugged up feeling can go on for a couple of months. It’s just serous ooze from the surgery. It will slowly resolve over the next several weeks. Good luck at your activation.
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Thanks! I wondered how long that feeling and sound would last. It seems it would interfere with good hearing as I start using the CI. I am started to get excited about the activation…
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We’re all rooting for you. I so love to hear of good outcomes.
WH
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That full feeling went away after 3-4 weeks for me. You might get old blood out of your nose or mouth. It’s coming from the inner ear draining.
It bothered me and just like that it was gone.
Life gets normal pretty quick.
Do you have numbness on your ear or loss of taste? The taste thing lasted almost two months with me.
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Thanks! The support helps a lot!
Yes, parts of the ear are numb–I expected that. There is just a bit of loss of taste on the operative side. I can’t tell for sure if my overall taste is affected, since food does not taste as good as usual right now. I’ve had many surgeries in my life and I think I usually feel that way after general anaesthesia. My surgeon told me he had to expose a nerve to get to the inner ear, but it should come back. It’s amazing to think of what the surgeons do in that tiny area! I was spitting a little bit of blood after surgery but that’s very little now.
I agree that life gets normal quick! I hope hearing will get normal soon!
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Hello Sheryl! I was looking at some of the older posts and I think I should introduce myself. My name is Ina (long I). I live in New Mexico, though my husband and I hope to move out of the state in the near future. I wore hearing aids for more than 15 years, and finally they weren’t helping enough. I qualified for a cochlear implant in both ears in February 2024. I did a lot of research, and had surgery on my left (better ear) with the Cochlear brand implant on July 1, 2024. I am now deciding whether to try bimodal with an expensive ReSound hearing aid, or train the current CI and decide if I want to get a second CI in the near future.
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Was there a specific reason you chose Dr. Ruffin? I was going to ask about preserving remaining hearing but his webpage explains it well: Hear better when you preserve remaining hearing with cochlear implantation
Let us know how you find the remaining hearing as you recover and over time.
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I chose Dr. Ruffin because I read an article by him on Hearing Tracker, and he is an advocate as well as a surgeon. He has two CIs himself so I thought that would help him understand what we go through. I met him in March where we spoke for an hour. I decided to go to him for surgery after doing more research. There is lots of thought by surgeons and researchers that everyone does not need to lose their residual hearing in cochlear implant surgery. I went back for surgery last week. I really hoped to save my residual hearing, and Dr. Ruffin does something called soft surgery, also used in other countries. He believes that my residual hearing has been preserved so far. I know it can go away later for various reasons, but I am hopeful. I used to live in Seattle so it feels like home to me.
In my experience I would train your CI ear for3-4 months first before getting a Resound aid. My Aud suggested I did this. From memory it was about 8 weeks before I got my aid. By 8 weeks I was hearing extremely well through my processor. I know @Raudrive also trained his CI ear before he went bilateral.
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One can never be sure whether the residual hearing will remain? Is that because of future damage should the implant move? Or are there other downstream complications that can happen?
That’s very helpful advice!
I’m far from an expert about why residual hearing can go away, but I’ve read that scarring and inflammation can cause the loss. Personally I plan to believe that I will keep mine, since some people do!