One major improvement that comes with a cochlear implant is no more squealing or whistling. If I was about to hug someone, I got nervous because I feared my hearing aid would squeal. It happened a few times and made me uncomfortable or embarrassed depending on who the other person was. The cochlear implant doesn’t squeal. The only time I get feedback with the implant is when using certain cell phones. The sound is more like static or the noise you hear when a modem makes in connecting right after the tone.
I could hear the squealing most of the time and it wasn’t easy to adjust the hearing aid to make it stop. I either had to lower the volume or jiggle the ear mold until I heard nothing.
But there were times when I couldn’t hear the whistling and someone would bring it to my attention. I knew the person was doing me a favor, but it was still embarrassing as it sometimes meant unwanted attention. “Hey, who’s squealing in here??” kind of attention.
I had the volume on my hearing aids maxed out most of the time. So that caused plenty of annoying sounds leaking out. With the digital hearing aids, I didn’t have the volume all the way up. Same for cochlear implant.
Right before I got the implant, I started having problems with my digital hearing aids (they were not old!) and we sent them in for repair. I don’t think they fixed it, but by that time — it wasn’t worth dealing with. I tried to wear a hearing aid in the other ear, but it felt very uneven and uncomfortable. So I rely on the lone implant.
2 comments
just a thought… the squeal due to the hearing instrument is probably actual acoustic feedback similar to a PA system with too much gain. The implant sounds due to the cellphone, on the otherhand, are probably due to pickup from the power converters in the cellphone. These operate with nasty switching noise and can easily interfere with devices. I’d be interested to know which brand of phones cause this most…
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Hank Christen
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