Mike's Implant - One Year Later

As this blog doubles as a family journal, I wanted to do a quick post about Mike's implant now that he's had it for a full year. Keep in mind this is all from my perspective so who knows if what I'm writing is even true (maybe Mike will do a follow up post in his own words - we'll see).

Overall Mike's implant has been a wonderful blessing both for him and for our family. He adjusted amazing well to it with very little extra work on his part (by extra work I mean specialized "listening" therapy and practice). The only practice he did was listening to me and others in normal conversation and asking me what he was hearing any time he couldn't pin-point where a sound was coming from. The audiologist has been floored by his progress as she's never seen an adult adjust so quickly or hear as well as he does. He's just awesome that way! At his last mapping in June his hearing test showed he was hearing at an average of 10 decibels across all frequencies (which is within normal range. Before that ear was 110 decibels!)

I've been amazed too! Essentially Mike can hear almost anything I can. He hears and understands Hazel as well as I do; he hears Eliza crying from the next room; he understands conversations without needing to lip-read; he hears things that are quiet like a clock ticking and things that are far away like an ambulances; he hears well enough to follow conversations in groups most of the time. Even after a year he is still discovering new sounds. Last night he thought he heard someone knocking but it was actually water dripping from the faucet in to our metal kitchen sink. He has tried talking on the phone some to his family and I thought he did really well. I think if he practiced more he could hold conversations with unfamiliar people on the phone, but he hasn't shown much interest in gaining that skill because he's comfortable not talking on the phone.

Now, that being said I don't want this to read like the implant has completely restored him to normal hearing. He is still very much deaf (and glad to be so at times!) and the implant certainly has its limitations. It doesn't pick up sounds as well in large rooms/outside and because Mike only has one implant he may not hear a sound depending on the direction its coming from. And while he is able to hear so many things, it is still work to make sense of what he is hearing. Mike still prefers watching movies with the captions on so he can just enjoy them and doesn't miss anything. He still has interpreters for all of his classes so he can focus on learning the material without having to "think" about understanding what is being said. For church, Mike still prefers having interpreters for the same reason (although, one week at my parent's ward without an interpreter he felt like he understood about 80% of what was said in Sacrament which is a huge improvement of 0% before). He still prefers to sign. As a family I will say that we sign less now than we used to. With two kids it's often easier for both of us since our hands our tied up and we can't always be within sight. But, when it's just the two of us I think we sign about as often as we did before the implant.

I know that Mike has been happy with his decision to get the implant. In fact, given the opportunity he would like to have the other ear done too. Originally the plan was that he would use a hearing aid in the other ear, but after the implant he refuses. He says it sounds terrible and he can't understand anything he hears from that ear anyways. Even after the audiologist asked him to give it another try just for a week, he lasted about half a day before ripping it out again, haha. All of the goals Mike has for his implant have been realized (serve in church more, understand the kids better, etc). And honestly I can't think of anything he doesn't like about it. At first the bit of extra weight bothered him a bit, but he is used to it by now and loves now having anything in his ear canal now. Overall, we have been extremely blessed with this technology and overjoyed with the results we've seen.