What I love about being bilateral and a 100% score

The following are some things I love about being bilateral:

• Sounds are louder, richer and fuller with both my implants on. With only one CI on, sound seems one dimensional and sort of flat. I hear better with one implant than the other but sound quality is best with both. Imagine watching a movie and then watching the same movie in 3D.


• When riding in the car, I hear equally well whether I am in the passenger seat or driver's seat. I can hear and understand people sitting in the back seat regardless of which front seat I am in. Prior to being bilateral, I always heard best as a passenger and even then had great difficulty understanding those sitting in the back.


• In large meeting rooms at work, I can hear people from both sides of the room. Prior to being bilateral, I would try to sit in the middle of a group but in large rooms I could still only hear those on my implanted side. If I tried to sit with my implanted side to all of them, then I was too far away to hear well. Now, I can place myself in the middle and I hear from both sides.


• At parties or in larger groups of people, I can hear the person standing next to me regardless of which side the person is standing on. I feel like I am relearning to focus on one ear at a time depending on which side has the sounds I want to hear. It's much easier to follow conversations in noisy situations.
  
• I've been able to attend company and department meetings without needing my FM since receiving my second implant. In church, I hear more of the prayer requests from people sitting around me and across the aisle.

You might wonder if it's difficult having two different strategies on the CI's. It was a bit odd at first, but maybe it would have sounded odd even with the same strategy since my right ear had not heard for close to ten years. During those ten years, I used the Advanced Bionics S-Series, then Platinum PSP /C1 cochlear implan on my left ear and no hearing aid on the right. After receiving the Harmony/90K in August, I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my brain adapted to what it was hearing. Hungry for sound, it quickly started merging the two different signals to increase my overall understanding of sounds and speech.

Today I had my 6 month mapping for the Harmony/90K on my right ear and my annual mapping for the PSP/C1 on my left ear. Both ears scores were up. The results of my HINT sentence tests in quiet were awesome! Here they are:

Right Ear(Implanted with 90K/Harmony Aug 2008) Sentences 99%
Left Ear (Implanted with C1/PSP Dec 1998) Sentences 93%

Both together 100%!!!!!

So, does this mean I'm hearing perfectly, normally and everything?? No, of course it doesn't. But it does mean that I'm hearing the best I have in a long, long time!

My next post... Switching from SAS to MPS after ten years of CI listening. Can I do it? And why should I try?