For Kent

[Guest guest]

I see that you only have CI for less than a year and you are already

considering a 2nd one. I understand the desire and the need to have a

rich and full speech quality. Can you give me a bit more information

about your hearing because you said in your previous post that you

think we have the same kind of hearing history.

Let me give you a little background on my hearing history. I have

completely profound hearing loss in my left ear-so that ear is dead

to any sounds. A year ago before I got sick, on my audiogram for my

good ear I had a downward ski slope curve starting at 70 DB going

down to 90-95 DB. I was able to use the phone with my analog hearing

aid. I used the phone a lot (for work) , and I could comfortably talk

to virtual strangers without lipreading of course. What I find really

interesting is that you said you used to wear digitial hearing--I

tried digitial and I loved it. But however for some reason the

digitial hearing aid did not give me enough 'boom' to be able to hear

on the phone. I really needed to use the phone cuz i use it a lot in

my life. I had to switch back to analog hearing aid. Were you able to

hear on the phone with digitial or analog very well?

Anywayz, on the phone I could only understand someone whose first

language is American or Canadian English a lot better than someone

with a heavy accent. My husband is British, and boy when I first

talked to him on the phone, I could barely understood him. After

talking to him on the phone the 3rd times, I got used to his voice

and speech patterns, and from there we were able to carry out full

conversations. I don't think its speech quality that is the reason

why I was able to hear on the phone because when my audi did an

audiogram a week before my surgery date, I regained some hearing

back, between 10 to 20 DB in some thresholds. It made a great

difference to me because I was able to have access to more sounds

that give me a lot more clues to construct what the person was saying

on the phone. It's kind of like filling in the blanks in a sentence

for me. I was able to hear only certain people who I know very well

and have the right pitches for me to pick up what they are saying

even with 80DB+ loss.

Also a year ago I was able to hear music. I could understand songs

only if I had read the lyrics or know the words. I can hear different

musical pitches, but I can't make distinctions. So I know exactly

what you mean by 'quality'. I could hear the words but not the

actual full pronunciation. Like for instance, if someone sings " Happy

Birthday " (I don't hear the soft 'p " or the 'th'). I do not hear 's',

t, k, ch, sh in speeches at all. But I know that they are there. I

believe my brain fill that in to make it seemed like I hear them? I

don't know if you know what i mean. I can't sing happy birthday tune

right--i sing so out of tune and it's terrible. My hubby and sisters

have tried so many times to teach me this simple song that I can

never ever get it right. I could hear the song and melody, but I'm

not hearing the pitches and tune right-so the quality is lost there.

I was so frustrated, and I've tried to train myself, but i gave up

because how can I train myself when I can't 'pick up' what I'm

missing or not hearing. SO I really understand the desire to acheive

speech and vocal quality. That is WHY i want to get a CI to see if I

can achieve them?

When I went out to watch movie at the movie theatre, I used to wear a

headphone and I could understand probably around 70% of the time

without lipreading. When rear window captioning came out, I got real

lazy and relied on captioning because I didn't want to miss out

anything.

What I'm trying to say is that to get quality, sophisicated sounds,

your hearing would have to be perfect and normal. No machine can

replace natural, normal hearing or come close to it. It would be an

miracle if it does. So I'm really curious on activation day what I

will hear. I noticed that you have Nucleus and that you don't think

you are going for Advanced Bionics or Nucleus again. Well then the

obvious choice would be down to Med-el.

I wonder if you can hold off not getting a second implant for a

little while longer as you were only implanted for a year. Give

yourself more time as I believe you may be still on a learning

process. Also if you are doing well with what you have now, if were

you, I would wait 5 years or longer because technology is growing so

fast. Who knows they may come out with a better, less invasive

technology. They are making trying to make improvements.

I got implanted last week with Advanced Bionics--i chose that brand

because of rechargeable batteries, T-Mic, and yeah i'm vain--the

colour and look of it--and the big plus is the 120 channel software

that is coming out later this year. There are positive feedbacks

from AB users who are on the 120 channels trials. Ask them. Also

there is someone named Binns, who is also a bilateral user--she

has both nucleus and AB, and she is on the 120 channels trial too.

Nora