Last Monday, 4/12/2026, was my third programming session for the Envoy Acclaim, fully embedded cochlear implant.
This time there were no firmware updates, which there were on both of the previous occasions.
We began with Tympanometry, a pressure test to test that my ear drum was functioning normally. Apparently it was / is, so on to the next step.
The next step was calibrating the frequencies I can hear with the implant. I did notice one frequency that I had not noticed before, either that or had forgotten. This must be a very difficult process for the audiologist because it is so subjective and each patient probably has a different way of interpreting what they are hearing.
Then we did a little testing and programming for clarity of speech.
Anyway, we got that out of the way and then did a simple colour naming recognition test which I got 100% on. That was without my hearing aid and with my left ear plugged.
Then on to the booth.
The booth was all the normal “ready, word” testing and then a bunch of in-context sentence tests. These all again just with my right ear / implant.
I don’t think I did very well with either of those tests, but Dr. Kara said that I was very close on a lot of the words, just didn’t quite nail them.
At the end of all that, which was necessary for the trial, Dr. Kara wanted to test my comprehension with my hearing aid in my left ear.
This is great news…my comprehension level was a little over 80%. That is really very good when you understand that when I went in to be assessed to see if I would be a good candidate for the clinical trial, and I had two hearing aids, my comprehension level was 82%.
As far as I am concerned, that’s a huge win already. That and my music has already improved significantly, especially pitch recognition.
Now, I have spent a fair amount of time over the past 5 days since the reprogramming, without my hearing aid and relying on the implant. I am so much better off today than I was before the implant, and again, since the implant was first activated.
Right now I would guess my comprehension, without my hearing aid, in a quiet room, is probably around 50%, maybe a little better. Nevertheless, I plan to not use my hearing aid and to depend on the Acclaim implant, as long as I can, every day.