This is now my second regular weekly report on the Envoy Acclaim completely embedded cochlear implant clinical trial in which I am a patient.
A little over a week ago I cranked to Profile 4 and started to crank up the volume. Not quite sure why I decided increasing both the volume and sensitivity were a good idea, but I did. With the sensitivity turned up I do get more noise but I am able to tolerate it so it does not bother me.
I keep the volume turned up to about 80% of max. I figured I can’t do any damage so why not and I’ll see what impact it has.
What I have found is that with the implant turned up, my overall impression of the sound I am hearing is not as affected by my hearing aid ear so I have a much stronger Donald Duck sounding meld of both sound sources. If I listen hard I can hear them as two different sources but under normal listening, they merge into a single, almost mono, channel.
I have continued with my hour of piano per day, I know, it was supposed to be half an hour, and also, although not as regular, my relative pitch ear training.
So far, my appreciation of music has greatly improved and I actually went and rehearsed with a couple of people and had little trouble.
On the other hand, my speech comprehension seems to be a little more iffy. Sometimes it seems like I can hear and comprehend really well and then other times I have to really concentrate. I am spending some time intentional listening with captions but the captions are so often wrong I am better off lip reading. My overall impression is that I don’t have to concentrate as hard as I did a week ago and comprehension overall has improved.
As far as the Acclaim design and use goes, I love it. It’s like I’m just “normal” with my two ears with my hearing somewhat improved and I’m not “wearing” anything. For me that’s a real bonus.
This morning when I was charging the battery I was thinking it would be nice to have a battery pack you can just replace so have one charging on a desk somewhere while you use the other. The problem of course is that now you are “wearing” something again, the battery. Although charging the battery in my chest isn’t much of an inconvenience or uncomfortable it would be nice to not have to do it, but compared to having to “wear” and carry an external battery, charging my chest is much preferable.
Nothing else much to report. Charging takes about three hours and lasts about 2 days and 3 nights, on full time. Which I really like.
Overall, I would rate this 8 out of 10 stars, the remaining 2 pending being able to plug my hearing aid ear and rely on the implant for speech comprehension. When that day arrives I will definitely plan to have my other ear implanted.