Back to Normal Hearing?

Recently I've had a few people ask me questions such as:

"When will your hearing be back to normal?"

OR

"How long will it be until you're hearing 100%?"

So I figure it's a good time to throw an update out there. First off, what is normal? If normal is what natural, un-aided, loss-less hearing that I was born with is like, well, I hate to break it to you my friends, but it will never be normal again. Cochlear Implants work by completely bypassing the outer ear canal and all of its intrinsic functions, sending a direct electrical impulse to the Basilar Membrane resulting in brain interpretation of sound. Follow? So when people joke that I'm bionic, they're really not kidding. And as you can imagine, a set of 22 electrodes and their tiny little electrical stimulations can hardly recreate the natural work of 30,000 hair cells.

Does that mean I'm hearing 1/1500 of the definition of sound that the natural ear experiences? Not exactly. Even though I'm getting a much, MUCH, less defined sound, the brain works its magic and over time adjusts to this new "sound". In my case, having a past experience with natural sound, my brain has effectively pieced things together so that many sounds (mostly less complex) sound very close to how I remember them. But they'll never be normal again.

Unless...

If we define normal as the everyday sound I'm used to hearing, then I really am getting close to being back to normal. This is who I am now, bionic ear and all. Speech sounds pretty good but slightly sore-throated, singing sounds whiny and pitchy, drums sound like drums, trumpets sound like party-horns. Thankfully, 80's metal still sounds like 80's metal and T-pain will always sound like T-pain (if you watched that whole video, I apologize, not really).

As far as 100% goes, I think 100% realistically is over the course of my life going forward. It's true that the most progress is evident during the 1st year, but the longer I get used to and adjust to this new way of hearing, the more it will continue to improve.

One roadblock I've hit is that I have a dominant ear due to having my surgeries, and subsequent new sound learning periods, about 5 months apart. My Right ear surgery was 1 year ago today, December 13th, 2010, and after having the implant activated and being forced to wear it by itself I experienced a rapid increase in sound volume and clarity.

The second time around with the Left ear it's been much more difficult to use one ear by itself because I know exactly what I'm missing now. I have an excellent hearing ear on my Right side and when I shut it off, it's painfully obvious how much harder it is to hear and how distorted things sound. Even though my Left ear isn't quite at the same level, it still helps tremendously to have hearing on both sides. And even though my Left ear has progressed much slower, it still has the potential to gain much more.

Now I just have to force myself to spend time listening with only my Left side...something I'm trying to work on periodically during situations where I'm not dependent on conversation. I tried this out last Saturday for about 5 hrs in the morning, and was noticeably stressed and worn out by noon, but every little bit helps, I can tell the difference when I put the time in.

Happy Bionic Birthday to me! Words can't express my gratitude...but if they could, I could hear them.

"3 CIs would be awesome, word"