and

[Guest guest]

Hi Ladies,

Indeed, it does take longer for pre lingually deafened people to get

speech, but it comes. It took close to 3 months for me to understand

speech with the implant, and I was definitely post lingually deafened.

But I was also implanted in an ear that had no hearing and no stimulation

for 20 years. As I keep reminding people, it's a journey, not a race.

And it doesn't do any good to compare yourself to someone who just lost

hearing a few months prior to being implanted.

Many people have hearing and speech understanding with their first

mapping; many don't. So since it's an individual process, enjoy the

journey.

,

I was implanted and activated about a month before you, and I am also

prelingually deaf. I never had any speech understanding with my one

hearing aid. I am also hearing very soft sounds, and the cadences and

tones of speech, but I just don't understand the speech yet other

than my name. I think you and I will take longer, as we have to learn

speech from scratch (unless you had at least some speech

discrimination with hearing aids). The brain also needs time to make

the new connections for understanding these sounds. So I am also

trying to be patient. It is difficult, because most people getting

CIs seem to be people who had hearing before, or more hearing, or

they are children. There don't seem to be many people in our precise

position (another person on this group in our situation is Chris).

Best wishes,

Freedom 3/8/07, activ 3/27/07