Briefly about me: I’m 70 and have had progressive hearing loss all my adult life, for no discernible reason (no guns, no heavy machinery, wasn’t in a band, etc.) I have worn hearing aids for 35 years. In 2007 I had a stapedectomy on my left ear that didn’t go well—it increased the ear’s volume but hurt acuity. Meanwhile the right ear continued to regress. In recent years I’ve been more and more cut off from human communication except with people whose voices I know well and speaking in quiet environments and without masks.
I had CI surgery on my left ear last September and October 20 was Turn-On Day. AB Naida M (I think) with a paired Phonak hearing aid in the right ear. The results have been spectacular, life-changing. I can listen to the car radio, I can understand people in meetings and in usual day to day scenarios, I can understand movie and TV dialogue, I’m not afraid of meeting new people. I even do pretty well in noisy restaurants.
Yesterday I had my six-month follow-up. In the left ear, where pre-op I had tested at 0% on the two-person no-noise conversation test, yesterday I was at 80%, and with both ears (Phonak in the right) I was at 90%.
The one downside to the implant is that the sound quality is a bit off. A little low and draggy, not a lot of treble, voices and music don’t sound quite right. While my right ear acuity is bad (around 30%), the sound quality with hearing aid is pretty good, especially in the treble range. So the two ears together average out in my head to something like normal sound. Streamed music sounds very good, for example.
I’m getting to my question now. In yesterday’s meeting, my surgeon discussed the benefits of a second implant. His main points were: (1) my implant tone tests show the implant is providing treble, and the treble I hear from the right ear is largely brain subjectivity; (2) With two implants, localization is improved, thus improving sound quality; and (3) that down the road my right ear will go “kaput” (his word) and that age and morbidity might preclude an implantation. (Btw, my surgeon has performed over 900 implant surgeries, and is very well respected.)
My main concern is that with my current set-up, things are so good I hate to mess with success. So, while recognizing that there’s a lot of YMMV with CI’s, for those of you with implants in both ears, how do you find sound quality? Does it approximate “normal” sound?
I’m glad I found this forum, and thank you for your patience with an over-long initial post.