One year update

Today marked my one year anniversary with my cochlear implant. Technically, that day was on March 31st. However, today I went back to Washington University for my one year research appointment with the cochlear implant team so I am considering TODAY to be my one year anniversary. I'm not going to lie, I was a little nervous. I've been wearing my CI everyday as much as possible but other than that, I have not done much of any rehab or practice with it alone. Last night, I used my "Sound and Way Beyond" program for the first time since September. This software program is a good rehab tool that I got when I received my CI. I wanted to see if sounds and words would sound different from the last time i tried it. Last time, I only got to the part where I had to differentiate between vowel sounds. It was really hard because they all sounded the same so I never tried going further. Yesterday, I focused on the section in which I had to differentiate between the words. While familiarizing myself with the words, I was really surprised that most of them sounded like the word shown. However, if I had not seen the picture associated with the word, I'm not sure I would have recognized the words. On the closed word test (choose between 2), I got about 80% correct. Not bad! I was a little less nervous now :)

At my research appointment today, we went though all the tasks that I have done previously in the past year (4 hours of it!). I did my best, but I really could not tell if I was performing better on the tests with both my CI and my hearing aid or just my hearing aid alone. I do know that I am more confident about my responses when I have both on. In the past 6 months, I've noticed that I am doing better in noisy situations with my implant than without it. I'm also picking up more soft sounds and am more aware of people approaching me when I'm not looking. I'm not sure what the results from today will reveal, but in the real world I can tell a difference. I will say that today, I noticed I was able to differentiate between tone pitches and count the tones (important for programming the CI levels) better than last time. I think that there is still room for improvement. The research audiologists seem to think so too. It's amazing how people vary so greatly in their successfulness with a cochlear implant. Anyhow, my CI was reprogrammed today and it's amazing how much improved it is than before! I think I will like this new map. I'm excited to see!