How fast did your hearing drop and did it Plato or keep going?

Great WRS. I need to get to work on that !!

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Man I experienced a 20 db drop from severe range to profound range in 5 years… over that time I had to fight with my hearing loss until I got a Cochlear implant. I was so frustrated with the asymmetric of my hearing loss… i could hear out of one ear very well but my other one was dead, it was like beating a dead horse with a sledge hammer and hoping it would move but it won’t move much

Thanks so much for this info! I am at the stage where I need to consider this. I am digging my heels in but only because I understand that the CI sound is very mechanical. Right now the sounds I hear are natural, altho weak. I need to learn more by searching on this forum about CI, or another. If I knew how it would sound, I could have better expectations and adjust my attitude about getting one.

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Your brain will overwrite the neural pathways that is responsible for hearing with a strong signal from CI, do not worry how it will sound and you will not remember that, it sound “natural” to me now and much more detailed than my HA side…

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I didn’t care what it sounded like, I just needed to hear. Yes to start with it was robotic sounding. But as ssa said once your neural pathways in the brain have been laid down things again start to sound natural. For me it took around 10 months for the voice naturalization to happen. Again everyone is different, naturalization happens in everyone sooner or later.

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Do you mean “plateau”? This one really through me off!

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I’m currently 18. Got diagnosed with a mild-moderate hearing loss about a year ago (mild in my left, moderate in my right). I now have profound hearing loss in both ears. Still trying to find out the cause. My hearing loss is in all pitch ranges which I find interesting as most people have a slope in highs or lows. I have a wrs score of 11% in quiet with hearing aids.

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Perhaps they were waxing philosophical LOL

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And my face is red for “through” vs “threw”!

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I always seem to typo when trying to correct someone else’s mistake.

Getting to the point of feeling ready can be a process. It took me a year of asking questions and all here were very helpful and patient. I have observed someone on another forum - on facebook - who has a lot of complaints about the sound. However, they were completely deaf prior to the implant and now they have decent word recognition. I had to get myself to the point where I was ready to accept “hearing” over “natural hearing” and that’s when I felt ready. I am focusing on what i am gaining rather than what I lost or hoped to have, and that approach seems to be helping feel very positive about it. My natural hearing was minimal and low functioning, so time to move on for me! I have no regrets and it improves over time.

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Thanks so much, @Joanhawsey. I think these are really good words. You are right: what’s really important here? I just think about never being able to hear birds or my husband’s voice in natural tones. I think I’m getting closer, but I agree that my focus needs to change. I need to look at what I’ll get, and not what I’m giving up. After all…how good is what I’ve currently got anyway?? :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Thank you, @Deaf_piper! I see now the only info I’m getting is you might need one. Nothing about anything else. Everyone here has been so helpful. And I think you raise a good point. You just needed to hear. I’ll get there. Rereading all these posts made me think that maybe I’m being a little selfish, asking everyone to repeat all the time because I won’t move forward.

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Thank you, @ssa! I have no clue! And the people I talk to who have them don’t like them. That’s why I worry about expectations. This is very helpful to me.

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@irenejd52 I’ve had a CI now for 3.7yrs in my R ear. My L ear has a HA, so I’m bimodal. I’m putting off going bilateral for the time being. Getting a CI is the best thing I ever did. My WRS went from 26% to 94% in 12 months

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@Deaf_piper Thank you so much!! Any insight I can glean will be so helpful. I’m encouraged to hear so many positive things from everyone. I live in a 55+ community and I think they are all grumps. Out of the 12 people who have CIs that I have talked to, 10 have only negative things to say about them. Not one positive thing!. The other two loved them. I can see from all our discussions here that I need to explore more as to why they have them, how was their hearing before. It will help me when I get to making a decision and I will better understand the whys…

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I think you need a perspective from an actual 18 hour per day user… I love music, speech with them, speech in noise is far better then any hearing aid on the market… I got my implant at 28 and now i am almost 32.5 years old. Almost 5 years in the making. I want (but not need) to get a CI on the other ear but my audiologist said no, not medically necessarily yet and i don’t have any reason to do it medically wise… (still scoring 80% on my non implanted ear)

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@irenejd52 just don’t leave moving forward until you can’t hear.

Why? Simply because if you move on while you have some natural hearing left, the necessary hours of rehab won’t be so difficult.
If you leave it until you can’t hear your starting from the bottom of the barrel. That’s not to say you won’t get a good result eventually. But you will need to do some serious hours in rehab.

If you look at my audiogram you will see I’ve still got good lows. My AuD said it’s because of these lows I was able to understand speech when I was activated. Others might have taken several mappings before they could understand speech.
If you have a current audiogram could you chart it so the forum CI members can give you better guidance.

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@Deaf_piper Wow! This is such good info. And very interesting and helpful. I always thought my audi was good, but I’m having my doubts now. She works in an office with an ENT who does CIs so I would have expected her to address these issues. Especially when I discussed with her that I wasn’t getting much positive feedback. We’ve never talked about this and I think I was asking the right questions. This kind of info is exactly what I need. Thank you so much!

I will post an audiogram when I get my next one in two weeks. I got away without getting the last one, but it was at least a year ago, so this one will be current. I’ll be sure to do that.

I’m somewhat new to the forum. Would I post and then just ask for input?

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You’re right, @ssa. I want lots of perspectives! I’m so unknowledgeable about these. Oh, to be able to hear speech in noise!!

Do people not use them all day? I could not imaging why they wouldn’t. I’m so glad you have a solution that is working so well for you! I can see what you want to be fully ‘CI-d’! Thanks for your views.