Cochlear Implant Progress Update 1
It has been 5 weeks since surgery and 3 weeks since switch on / activation. Overall, I am ahead of where I had been expecting to be after 3 weeks activation. I am noticing improvements every day. I am comfortably able to have a conversation with a few people. I also notice I am less likely to ask people to repeat themselves. New voices (when I have no subtitles) can still be a challenge.
I had my first "mapping" session post activation, this is a tuning session where the external processor is uniquely tuned for me. At this session and after the tuning, the audiologists completed two quick tests. The first test was based on sentences, the audiologist played a sentence and I had to repeat the sentence, I scored 87%, previously I was scoring less that 40%. The second test is a word test, the audiologist would play a random word, and I would again have to repeat the word, I scored 66%. The sentence tests are always easier than the word tests, as you pick up on the context. I was more than happy with these results. My next "mapping" is end of August, and if we have time, hopefully we can repeat these tests.
I have not really thought too much about what I expect at the end of the day. Generally, I just want to be able to function as best as possible in a hearing world, I don't expect to be perfect. I hope to get sentences test scores to be within the 90% - 95% range, and the word tests scores of between 80% - 90%, and a bonus would be; to understand better with background noise such as cafes / restaurants.
Let's run through a few different hearing scenarios:
TV & Movies - when using subtitles I am finding it relatively easy to understand and follow the conversation. At the moment I always have subtitles enabled. It remains a struggle and a challenge without subtitles. I have a few technology enhancements available to be, these are streaming devices and are excellent, basically the TV audio is streamed (similar to Bluetooth headphones), and I can entirely disable all external sound and just focus on the stream. This makes it easier again to follow the conversation.
Podcasts - for the first few days I very much struggled while listening to my regular podcasts. This has recently improved and I find that I can now listen comfortably without subtitles. Currently I have no subtitles for the Podcasts, Apple's MFI (Made for Iphone) and Apple's Live captions has a bug, preventing subtitles working. I understand about 80% - 90% of the podcast.
Conversations - generally I am understanding conversations very well especially in a good setting, i.e., one where there is not a lot of background noise. When out walking and there is road noise, its much more difficult, though not impossible. I do have to work a lot harder in order to pick up the conversation.
Restaurants - some improvements here compared to my hearing aid devices, I was able to understand the serving staff to some extent. The background noise (especially if there is music playing) makes it very difficult. I continue to challenge myself in cafes and restaurants. I do think over time this will improve, having said that, this will be very challenging. When there is little background noise and the restaurant is not busy makes it much easier to understand what people are saying.
Car / Road Noise - Initially (within the first 24 hours of activation) it was impossible to understand anyone while travelling in a car, this has improved and its now possible to understand more of the conversations. Listening to music through the car speakers has improved too. It has been a long time since I was able to understand sound from car speakers.
Music - Listening to music has improved and I can now understand tunes that I would be familiar with. I am not picking up newer tunes / songs just yet, but I hope this will improve in the coming weeks / months.
Wind - this is still a real struggle. On a windy day it's close to impossible to have a conversation outdoors.
Shopping malls - Hearing announcements in large shopping malls is impossible right now. I do not understand any of the words. Mostly related to the sound just reverbating around the large empty space and a lot of background noise.