My Story

Everyone's experience with a cochlear implant is a little different, but here is mine:

I. Background

I am 27 years old, married, and a full-time student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  I was born with a severe-to-profound hearing loss in my right ear and a profound hearing loss in my left ear due to a hereditary mutation on the connexin-26 gene.  Diagnosed at birth, I have worn one hearing aid in my right ear for my entire life and nothing in the left ear.  This was sufficient to enable me to communicate orally, receive a mainstream education, attend a respected university, and to work actively with clients and on the telephone as a consultant for three years.  In November 1999, I experienced a very minor drop in hearing that persisted for several months.  In May 2000, that hearing suddenly and dramatically worsened, although it spontaneously recovered into a slight loss within days.  However, in August 2000, I experienced a second major, sudden loss in hearing, from which I have not recovered.  At that point, my hearing was approximately 100 dB in both ears, as the audiograms below demonstrate.

 I was experiencing a great deal of tinnitus (ringing in the ear), had lost the ability to use the telephone, had massive difficulty handling a conversation with more than one other person, and got exhausted after prolonged periods of lipreading.  I was treated at various times with prednisone and triamterene/hydrochlorothiazide, but did not regain any of my lost hearing.  An MRI, balance tests, and lab tests have ruled out acoustic neuroma, autoimmune disorders, fistula, viruses, and a host of other causes.  Doctors theorize that the cause of my sudden sensorineural hearing loss is a result of further breakdown of the genetic mutation that caused my hearing loss at birth.

II. Getting a Cochlear Implant

On November 29, 2000, I officially became a candidate for a cochlear implant after scoring poorly on several speech discrimination tests.  However, over the next few months, my speech discrimination seemed to improve slowly but gradually.  As a result, my doctor and I decided to postpone the decision to get an implant until we could monitor whether my hearing would continue to recover.  On May 17, 2001, it crashed again, at which point we decided to move forward with the implant.  I was implanted with the Clarion CII Bionic Ear on June 11, 2001 at the California Ear Institute and was hooked up on July 2, 2001.  My surgeon was Dr. Joseph Roberson and my audiologist is Lisa Tonokawa--both are absolutely wonderful.

The surgery was relatively mild for me.  I had surgery in the morning and went home to that afternoon.  I was on prescription paid medication but my head still hurt considerably.  However, I slept through the entire afternoon and night, so it wasn't too bad.  The next morning, the pain was much less and I only needed to take Tylenol to manage it.  I did not have any dizziness, but I did temporarily lose taste sensation on one side of my tongue (a common side effect).  Within a week, my taste was back to normal.  Tinnitus went down considerably after the surgery, and all but disappeared once they turned on the implant.  Nowadays, the only time I really notice tinnitus is when I take off my implant, and it's very mild at that. My initial experience hearing with the implant was bewildering, as nothing sounded quite the way I was used to.  The sounds weren't artificial, per se, but different frequencies were accentuated in ways that I was completely unfamiliar with.  I knew that performance and sound quality typically improves very rapidly in the first few weeks and months as the brain adjusts to the sounds from the implant, so I reserved judgment during those early days.  Surely enough, after a few weeks, I found the quality of sound and my performance easily surpassing what my hearing had been like prior to surgery.  Within 2-4 months, I was able to use the telephone and enjoy music again, which were important milestones that I had hoped to achieve but did not know if I ever would.  The first three months of my experience with the implant proved to be extremely rewarding and easily validated my decision to get implanted.  It gave me back so much confidence, freedom, and enjoyment of sound that I am in awe of and extremely grateful for.

All bandaged up on the afternoon after the surgery

III. Switching to High Resolution

I was a participant in the clinical trials for the high resolution component of the CII Bionic Ear.  As part of the clinical trials, I used my CII in standard resolution mode (using SAS speech strategy) for 3 months, after which point I switched over to a high resolution sound delivery method.  This was done so that they could measure the relative performance of my hearing with standard resolution vs. high resolution.  On the first day of switching to high resolution, I did not notice much difference as my brain had not yet had a chance to get used to it.  As time progressed, I began to see improvement in my speech comprehension and the difference has become more noticeable.  After 4 months with high resolution,  I went back and tried my old speech program just for comparison, and the difference was immediately apparent to me.  Certain things are the same--such as that SAS was smooth-sounding enough, but whereas my old speech strategies were a little monotone or lacked sound "depth", high resolution seems to have a lot more range to it.  Everything just sounds a bit richer and crisper, and it's left me feeling that High Resolution marks a new generation of sound delivery that is an improvement over the current ones (SAS, CIS, ACE, SPEAK, etc.), which are generally said to be of similar quality.  At my checkup it was also pretty apparent to me that they are just scratching the surface of what high resolution can do, so with any luck, we'll continue to see improvements to it for years to come.  I am very grateful for the opportunities it has afforded me; however, different individuals may react to high resolution in different ways, so until the clinical trials for the high resolution capabilities of the CII Bionic Ear are completed and the results are published, it is difficult to generalize precisely what benefits it provides.

Below, you can see a chart which tracks my speech comprehension before receiving the implant (estimated) and afterwards, along with certain key milestones.  As the chart demonstrates, my performance with SAS appears to have leveled-off somewhat after about 3 months.  I speculate I would have continued to improve somewhat, but I feel that high resolution has accelerated and sustained that rate of improvement.  At the time of this writing, I am at approximately 9 months after my initial hookup, and find that my hearing still continues to improve.

IV. Receiving the BTE

Note: I have not tried the newest generation Clarion Auria BTE. Instead, the comments below refer to the older CII BTE, which is the one I have.

Because I was a participant in the clinical trials for high resolution, I had to wear my body-worn processor for 6 months so that my performance could be measured without the complication of switching processors midway through the trial.  I did not particularly mind the body-worn processor, as I enjoyed the discrete nature of the fact that only a headpiece showed on my head, nothing more, but I was looking forward to seeing what kind of freedom and comfort the BTE might be able to offer.  The transition to my BTE was smooth.  There was some intial soreness over my ear as I got used to it, but that has since passed and it is now very comfortable.  The sound quality is very much like that of my body-worn processor, and aside from an initial one week period in which I had some soreness on my ear, I don't even notice that it's there anymore.  It's pretty lightweight and comfortable.  My batteries last 5-6 hours apiece, as opposed to the 11 hours I was getting on my body-worn processor, but I have found that it takes less than 10 seconds to change a battery and it isn't inconvenient.  If necessary, it would be possible for me to use an extended battery with my CII BTE that might enable me to get 12 hours in between recharges, but I have not had the desire to do so.  For more personal thoughts on rechargeable vs. disposable batteries and battery life on BTEs, click here.  One thing about the BTE that I have not been entirely satisfied with is the fact that if the default volume setting on the BTE is not set at your ideal level when you see your audiologist, you have to manually adjust it to the ideal level every time you change your battery.  This is a slight inconvenience that will hopefully be improved upon in future models of the BTE.  Overall, I have been extremely pleased with the CII BTE and don't anticipate needing to go back to the body-worn processor for any reason.

One year after the implant, wearing my BTE

My overall experience with the implant has been extremely positive, and I often stop to reflect on how different my life might be today if it weren't for the implant and the remarkable support of Dr. Roberson, Lisa Tonokawa, and the many dedicated individuals who go into engineering these these devices.  My life will never again be the same.