A lot has changed in the last year...

Since getting High Res Fidelity 120 last year, I have experienced a lot of CI "firsts" - too many to note in one blog so I'm going to list them as bullet points and then work my way through them in subsequent blog posts. I have sorely neglected my blog whilst training to become a Play Therapist and there's no written record of my experiences in the last year, so I'm going to rectify this!

Here are the changes:

• High Res Fidelity 120 (HRF120).
• Advanced Bionics International Mentors Meeting in Switzerland 2012.
• Getting a Neptune!
• Naida Q70

High Res Fidelity 120  

I was excited to be finally using the strategy that my ears couldn't handle all those years ago and I could hear things that I wasn't used to hearing and this was great and I felt that my hearing plateau was climbing again but I spent much of my time confused, wondering why sounds were quieter instead of sharper, crisper! Eventually, after another trip to my audiologist, it transpired that I had spent a whole month, that's right, a whole month, listening through my 50/50 program meant for use with my FM radio system instead of HRF120! There had been a mix up in the order of the programs on the three program settings on my processor and silly me hadn't realised the difference between them. No wonder things sounded quieter, I had been listening on 50% of the sound coming through the microphone... Once this had been sorted out I was really happy with it all and I went off to learn how to process the 'extra' stimulation that I was receiving and this took quite a few weeks of practice, patience and perseverance. It kind of reminded me of the early days of my implant.. In the future, I'll ask my audiologist to write down the order of my programs so that I won't get them mixed up again! 

A bonus of having HRF120 is that ClearVoice (CV) seems much improved; everything doesn't sound so 'clinky' and it's a useful program in very noisy situations such as the car. I just wish my implant was in my left ear, as when I'm driving my CI is on the "wrong side"! I don't use it all the time, like I know some some users do, because I like the additional environmental sounds that CV will cut out in order to highlight speech.