Well, more accurately, yesterday.
I’ve got my volume and sensitivity cranked up to about 80% of max at this point. I find that in a noisy room having the sensitivity cranked is really unhelpful so I move it up and down a little sometimes.
I have not been doing a lot of ear training because I have been so busy, but keep trying, and I also continue to spend at least an hour every day as a listener without my hearing aid which forces my brain to listen more intently.
During a conversation with a friend yesterday I made the observation that a lot of the “noise” in the implant is actually not noise, per se, but sounds that my brain has not actually re-mapped yet. I think that’s why the noise gradually reduces, not because it goes away, but because my brain is now processing it correctly and putting it in the proper box. Why it doesn’t re-map say, a dog bark to being a car backfiring, or a bird tweeting to being a gate squeaking I don’t know.
We have a pedestal fan which is really quite noisy, even on the low setting and last night I had to turn down the volume on my implant so that it was tolerable. I’m not sure why that noise would be so intrusive, but it is. After some further attempt at tolerating the sound my wife turned it off. I guess I am going to have to find a quite one.
Last night we were playing dominoes and, as I sometimes do, I switched on Pandora which is about 20 feet away on the TV soundbar. Prior to having my CI, and turned on, I often could not make out the tune, even ones I knew very well.
As last night proved, at really low volume, I could hear and enjoy the music. Including songs with which I am not very familiar.