Reintroducing a hearing aid

Happy new year to you all! It’s been a busy few weeks what with work, christmas etc so apologies for the lack of updates.

At the end of November, my cochlear implant centre advised me to reintroduce a hearing aid into my non implanted ear. I wore it for a month before I had to stop wearing it.
I really hated the difference in sound between the cochlear implant and the hearing aid. The sound is not balanced. The sound coming into the hearing aid is very muffled. I felt as though I had a pillow over my ear.

Obviously the hearing aid cannot give sound as good as the cochlear implant but I was surprised by how quiet and poor the sound was, considering I wore hearing aids for 25 years pre implantation. I could not turn it up any louder.

I found myself getting confused and understanding things less well when I wore both the speech processor and the hearing aid. It was as though I was taking steps backwards rather than forwards on my journey to better hearing. I felt I did better with the cochlear implant alone so I stopped wearing the hearing aid.

My audiologist did say that she did not want my brain to work for the hearing aid over the cochlear implant so therefore she would set the hearing aid a little lower. I will see when I return to the centre if she can make the hearing aid sound any better but I suspect I will carry on without it.

Ideally I would like two cochlear implants so the sound is ‘equal’ in both ears but a second implantation (for adults) is dependent on funding and circumstances such as additional disabilities. I hope one day this changes!

As for the current cochlear implant, I’m hearing more things all the time. Popcorn popping at the cinema and being able to follow the whole of Les Miserables (a highly recommended film!)

Hope to have more to update soon!