Two Weeks Into Hearing

I continue to marvel at being able to hear.  Granted it is not yet "natural sounding" through my implant.  But words are clearly understandable.  I wear a hearing aid in my non-implant ear that is programmed to my implant processor. That means I am bi-modal.  I hear everything with both ears, but by different modes--hearing aid and implant.  People who have an implant in both ears are bi-lateral.

Because of the hearing aid, I continue to hear natural in that ear, but the new way in the implant ear.  This makes understanding much easier for me.  When I am practicing listening I remove the hearing aid in order to help the implant ear work more.  It surprises me that I have to concentrate so intensely or my mind wanders and tries to go into multi-tasking thinking about other things.  We take lots of things for granted, hearing included.

Being in a crowd is something I've avoided because of the noise.  I have attended three worship services.  At the first one, the preacher wore my mini-mic and all his words went directly to my ears.  Great--but it was a small service so not too much noise.  The next was at a large gathering.  To my great wonder I understood nearly every word.  I had clipped on the mic to see if that helped.  Not sure since I was pretty far toward the back.  When I got in the car to go home, I discovered I has lost the mic.  Panic!!  I found it on the floor where it had gotten knocked off in the crowd.  Won't do that a gain!  So thankful nobody stepped on it.  Today I sat near the back and was able to understand most of the preacher's words.  When I first got there, I could barely hear and it was very distressing.  I turned up the volume on both devices but it didn't help.  Finally I put a new battery in the hearing aid.  Not sure how I missed the alert that it was going out.  Immediately I could hear everything.

I have made a decision.  The question to me has been "will you have the other ear implanted?"  At first I said, I'm thinking about it.  However, I have realized that if I do, I will not have ANY hearing without the processors being in place.  As it is, I can hear to a degree with my hearing aid.  I'm not ready to give that up.  Unless I lose all hearing in that ear, I won't have another implant.

How blessed I am to be able to hear and understand--perfect or not.