Can’t believe that it’s now been 5 years since my first implant and 3 since my second.
I haven’t been updating this blog much lately because really there isn’t much new to say. I had my annual mapping almost a month ago, and my scores are fairly consistent with last year’s: word recognition in the 90s and sentences near 100% in quiet, not quite so good in noise. Overall sound quality remains about the same as I’ve described it before: it sounds like everyone I talk to is at the other end of a phone call. I’m pretty used to it by now, though.
So really, I’m just living my life. For the most part, it’s not all that different from before the CIs.
As someone born with unilateral deafness that’s been considering a CI for a long time, reading through your blog was both incredibly enlightening and reassuring. I’m 32 and just had my first BiCROS hearing aids give out on me after about a decade. Currently set to trial a Phonak Sphere with a Roger mic for my functional ear (left), but I’ve been considering a CI more and more for my deaf ear (right) as time has gone on.
I’ve honestly been afraid of any sudden changes in my left ear too, but reading about your experience with that while relying on your existing CI made me feel like that isn’t quite as much of an insurmountable issue as I’d always believed.
So thank you for writing about everything, and especially thank you for including so much of your everyday thoughts and experiences! I find that people tend to leave out what they consider “mundane” from their comments or talks about how CIs (or most things tbh) affected their lives, but to me, those things are important precisely because they’re what I’d be dealing with every day.
Really I’m just glad to see you’ve had such a positive experience and that you’ve been able to enjoy your life, even with the unexpected twists 💖 who knows, maybe I’ll be able to put my own experiences out there for other folks to find soon enough.
Hi – thanks for commenting (and for not being spam…I moderate all comments and 99.9% of them are spam)!
Just realized that I missed the 6/4-year update, but in a couple of months it’ll be five years since I went bilateral so that seems like a good occasion to make a new post, once I have my next mapping.
Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide!