A day without my implant

It's been a while since I've posted. In my last post I was trying to do some more implant only listening without my hearing aid. I find this really difficult to do as I don't yet have enough confidence in my implant and still feel very reliant on my hearing aid. This isn't surprising as I've listened with my hearing aid for as long as I can remember and my listening experience with my implant is entirely different.

I have to admit that there have been times over the last few weeks when I've wondered what benefit the implant is giving me in addition to my hearing aid. So... last week I decided to take the implant off for the day (it had to be on a day I was off work as my colleagues would never have let me get away with this!) to see what it would be like.

I lasted until 11am! I was shocked but I really noticed the difference without the implant. Unsurprisingly everything was much quieter. The biggest difference though was how much more effort I had to put in to listening and following what was being said. I felt like I had lost confidence in what I was hearing and that I was switched off. My brain seemed to be in overdrive filling in gaps that it wasn't used to. It's often difficult to describe what the implant is like and the difference it makes. For me, because I still have some useful hearing in my non-implanted ear (so long as I've got my hearing aid in!) it's a very different experience to those who have an implant who are profoundly deaf and have little or no benefit from hearing aids. At the moment the implant is complimenting my hearing aid. My hope is that in the future it will go beyond this but today's experiment has made me appreciate the implant and what it's already doing for me! I'm not sure at what point the implant stopped being obtrusive and started being useful. The changes are so subtle and gradual that it's only when you stop and take a step back that you realise the difference it's making.. Now I wonder how I managed so long without an implant!