Weekly Envoy Acclaim Update

I left this weeks update until the end of the day so that if anything unusual occurred I would not have to make an additional entry.

Progress this past week has been slow. The birds are sounding a little more natural and I seem to be able to hear more of them, although I am not sure that is 100% accurate.

I’ve pretty much got a routine of charging my battery every 3rd evening although yesterday I forgot and found my implant battery at 6% this morning so I charged it this morning which took about three and a half hours. I have noticed, and I do not know why this is the case, that a couple of times now even though the charger is above 70% when I finish charging the implant and it is turned “off” that when I turn it on a day or two later it has been happily discharging itself and, when I turn it on, it has this radical alert that the charger needs charging.

I still have the Donald Duck filter on but I am either learning to understand Donald better or my brain is actually reducing the duck filter. I can’t tell which at this point.

I have been practicing the guitar as I have a gig coming up on Saturday. Sometimes I practice without my hearing aid in the other ear. While I can do that, and I can hear and discern what I am doing, it does not sound great. The sounds from my two ears are merged and, partly because of the way I have the Acclaim set, my implant ear overwhelms my “natural” (left) ear.

The dog bark test is pretty much the same as last week. Sounds more like a duck quack that a dog bark, but it is actually improving.

I think if I had to cope with just the implant, from a communications point of view I could do that, and if I wanted to play the piano or guitar I could manage to do that too, but the music would sound so bad I would not want to play any music.

Despite having the implant cranked up to the max, I don’t find the “ambient” noise level bothers me at all. Especially when I am trying to go to sleep. I have no problem with hissing etc.

The other thing that is astounding is the lack of tinnitus. That alone is worth the wearing of the Acclaim.

All in all, I am still very happy with the implant and would recommend the device to anyone contemplating a CI, although I would probably suggest waiting until the Acclaim receives FDA approval.

This week I will be opening the pool and I am very much looking forward to how that is going to go. It has been a long while since I was able to have a conversation of any kind while swimming.