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Surprises on our CI journeys


Mary Beth

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Discovering how loudly my husband speaks on the phone; mostly because if that's what he does when he talks to his friends and his brother and I could never hear him, good grief, right?

Hearing the cicadas this summer from inside the building at work.

Hearing tires on the road for the first time.  (This became annoying quite quickly, but my brain sorted it out as background noise so it's not as obtrusive anymore so that one's two surprises.)  Also the bumpy noises when I drive over seams and potholes - my car has a hard suspension and I have high pressure tires too, so it's a lot noisier than I thought, and noisier than when I drive my husband's car.

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I think I was super surprised to find out how many things beeped and how many variations of a beep exist!

Also, I continue to be surprised by new sounds and how much faster I am at identifying them. On Friday, I heard music playing softly around me somewhere but I quickly realized it was coming from my coworkers ear buds! He must have been blasting that music 😲

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Hearing my wife yelling at me.Now I take both processors off and I can’t hear a thing.😇

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In all seriousness though making the decision of getting a CI was a no brained and going bilateral was the best decision I’ve ever made.There are so many benefits and way too many to mention. It’s great to be out with friend again and to hear what is being said and to join in on conversation.

You are hearing sounds that you never heard befor .

Going bilateral was almost having your natural hearing back ,I go to almost every MEDEL Mingle or Meet up in my area so much is learned. I am one of the few who is bilateral and I really endorse going bilateral ifyou qualify

When people tell me they are too old to get a CI or go and get a bilateral if qualified,I tell them hey I am 72 years old and I am planning on living 30 more years and I want to hear what is going on.

Its great to hear in stero.

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I'm surprised at how effortless it has been to hear most things. I don't have to concentrate to hear. I just hear! And I'm surprised that my brain recognised most sounds just as they sounded when I had normal hearing. 

Of course I have to concentrate when I'm doing the apps that test us, eg AB Clix and Angel Sounds but if I'm listening to an audio book I hear everything clearly! 

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You are doing great @Jewel.  Those apps (CLIX and iAngel Sound) will help in the long run because hearing one word in isolation and knowing which word it is from a set of similarly sounding words is an advanced listening skill.  The more individual words we hear correctly in conversation, the less our brains need to work to understand what is said.  I found that after I mastered CLIX and iAngel Sound, my listening abilities increased both in duration and in noise.  I used those apps everyday for quite some time.  I also used them after MAPping changes to speed up my adjustment to the new MAPs.  I like aural rehab and I like training my brain to use the CI input.  What I train and how I train changed over time.  Once I was solid with speech, I trained speech in noise.  I also trained musical pitch.  I like exploring new aural rehab apps and websites.  I have tried many apps and many websites.  Most I did not find helpful.  The ones that helped me are the ones I have shared here in HPs.

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Thanks @Mary Beth

It is funny. I do better in ABCLIX and iAngelSounds than I did last week for the one word test in the booth! I had to concentrate like crazy for that one! The sentence tests were much easier. Idk why the sentences have to be so long though! 

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@Jewel

AZBIO sentences?  Is that your sentence test too?

Crazy long sentences with a short sentence thrown in once in awhile just to shock you.  And some of those sentences are snarky!  We could at least be listening to polite sentences.  And a few of those speakers talk really fast.  Who makes these tests?

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@Jewel

We will always do better with those apps than in the booth with the one word tests because the apps have closed sets of words.  My spouse and I create our own CNC word training sessions by saying one syllable words from articles or the newspaper and I repeat them back.  

I almost should not post this because people already tease me about my love of aural rehab.  Smile.  But it was so helpful.

Without a doubt, I would not be functioning so well with my balanced CIs if I did not train my brain so much.  It helped me.

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@Mary Beth

Yes AZ-BIO sentences. It was crazy. The audi said maybe the accents were a factor too. Maybe if I had some Jamaican accents I would have done much better! 

Sometimes when I do ABCLIX and iAngelSounds I don't look at the choices. I listen to the sound, figure out the word and then look at the choice list. I don't have an actual person to make up CNC list tests with. So it's a good thing I have all these apps, audiobooks, etc to get me through. 

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@Jewel

You really are doing great.  And the apps help a lot.  I used them a ton.  

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