I had an appointment with an audiologist today, new upgraded hearing aids ordered.

She suggested that I consider cochlear implant, and will schedule a consultation with an audiologist who specializes in these.

Does anyone here have this implant? If so, please tell me about it, either in this thread or via the email address in my profile.

I don't have one but I know several people who do and for all of them it was life changing. One is getting his second one soon and it has changed his life. Best of luck.

No personal experience, but my cousin has one that can bluetooth to his phone so he can take phone calls without anyone else hearing and adjust the volume to his liking.

Otherwise, I've just remembered random bits that Rush Limbaugh mentioned during his show, but he was 100% deaf when he got his so YMMV. The biggest drawback he mentioned was music. If it was a song he'd heard before his brain could fill in the details, but anything he hadn't heard was just noise. He also needed several sessions with his ENT to understand rhymes as one could sound like another without practice.

Limbaugh's examples are all from 20 years ago, and I would assume the technology has only gotten better since then.

I have bilateral implants, Cochlear Nucleus 8 for about 3 years now. My hearing was destroyed by Ménière’s disease.

As stated above, they hook into your phone and can adjust settings through an app. They definitely improve understanding of speech though some folks (mumblers, certain voice pitches) are still hard to understand. The processors are forward faced so sound in front of you is heard better.

Nature sounds (birds, etc) are improved but things like Cicadas will drown out other sounds. Harsher sounds like obnoxious engines will do so as well. Noisy environments are tricky. I find it best to set volume at 6 out of 10 and microphone sensitivity at 7 out of 12. Your audiologist can set several programs for specific environments but don’t expect major differences between programs.

Music is tough, whether piped in through Bluetooth or through speakers or live. Forget music with a lot of distortion (Heavy Metal ). As stated above, known songs can be filled in by memory. Forget listening to music loudly, they will automatically lower sound to protect your hearing. A lot of music, especially in the background will sound like noise. I have a music program which helps hear instrumentation but it degrades vocals. Rap sounds best, too bad I don’t like most of it.

Definitely better than hearing aids, which never worked well for myself. If you have more questions post here or email me (in profile).

My sister was about 65 yrs old when she got one implant 4-5 yrs ago. She had less than 10% hearing in 1 ear and basically nothing in the other ear. They normally do them 1 ear at a time and she started with one in her bad ear. It has worked so well that she decided not to do the other ear. She rarely misses a word when I am talking to her either in person or on the phone. Even though her hearing is very poor in the one ear, she said it still helps to make sounds a little bit more realistic. The one bad thing she has mentioned is that listening to music (classical, NOT rock) is not very good, so she doesn't do that much anymore.

No personal experience. But a neighboring PD has a deaf officer with a cochlear implant. They have his portable radio bluetoothed to it so he can get his calls.

quote:

Originally posted by ranger312:

The one bad thing she has mentioned is that listening to music (classical, NOT rock) is not very good.

That's kind of disappointing. My mother was a classical musician. She and her boss always had season tickets to concert series at Carnegie Hall. Her boss was out of town frequently, I used his ticket when he did not.

The most memorable concert I was privileged to hear there, was the September 1960 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, Isaac Stern the soloist, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic. Absolutely incredible performance. I would give a lot to be able to hear that again.