Nothing significant has changed this past week although I am no longer using closed captioning for watching the TV. I think also that I have the volume on my CI cranked up, plus the sensitivity, I am much more able to comprehend what the TV speakers are saying. This is with my left hearing aid in and on, but not being streamed to by the TV.
If I remove my left hearing aid it becomes much more difficult to comprehend what the speakers are saying with the sound still very duck like. I doubt my comprehension, without lip reading or captions, is much better than 40%. Probably close to where I was with my two hearing aids prior to the implant.
I definitely have the best experience with my left hearing aid and the implant. Far better than with the two hearing aids.
Yesterday, 05-14-26, I decided I would start to practice the guitar without my left hearing aid. I am going to do this now each day for half and hour, and then probably also the piano.
It was, initially, not great. My implant is definitely overriding what I am hearing in my left ear, particularly at the mid-range and higher frequencies, because the pitches are all wrong. So my brain is definitely still relying too much on my left ear for pitch and music generally. Regardless, I am going to persevere without my hearing aid to try and get my brain to function better with just the implant. The good news, I suppose, is that my brain is actually using the implant and not relying solely on my left ear. The bad news is that clearly my left ear hearing is not great in the mid-range to higher frequencies, actually really bad, and my brain, while depending on my implant for information, has not quite figured out how to categorize a lot of the sound as yet.
The implant charger remains a bit of a mystery with the way it goes from 65% charged after charging my implant, to 27%, despite being turned off. Consequently I have taken to just leaving the charger plugged in and charging when I am not charging my implant.
Dog barks. Dog barks are now sounding a bit more like natural dog barks and a little less like duck quacks, not a lot, but there is definitely more bass in the tone than there was a few weeks ago, and they are distinguishable as dog barks. I’m not sure if that’s just because it’s what I now expect as dog barks, or because my brain is doing a better job of hearing them as dog barks.
As I’ve mentioned previously, I have my implant cranked up. That means that it sounds really loud a lot of the time and sometimes sounds distorted. I don’t know if that is the transducer (mic) distorting, something else in the implant circuit, or something in my brain, but it may be a question to raise with Dr. Kara in June.
I am also intending to start working on frequency testing each day by playing various frequencies on my computer into a headset with my left ear plugged. I’ll let you know how that goes.
God bless.