You totally did not offend me. I had been wondering what your background was when I saw your response in the CI implant on deaf as well :) Very fair I thought, and actually answered the questions, which you also did in response to this post :) The biggest thing for bilateral...is partially money to be honest. If I did bilateral, if insurance does cover portions of doing bilateral, then it would be cheaper to do bilateral at once, instead of one now and the other later. But again, I'm not going to definitely decide until I find out what my insurance would cover, and that won't happen until after I find out if I'm all cleared by the MRI. The other thing that makes me wonder if I should do bilateral at the same time, is if doing them at the same time would change the dependency on a certain side of the implant. Often times when people are implanted on one side, and then later implanted on the other side, 80% of their functioning for hearing is done on one implant, the first one. The second one is mostly useful for environmental sounds. I have yet to do more research on this, but I don't want to put the time and effort into it until A - I know it's even a possibility, and B - my final comprehensive presentation is over for my master's :) Fortunately the MRI is after the final comp, so it'll work out :) I was leaning towards Cochlear as well, just cause I am an early interventionists for families with children who have a hearing loss. :) I've seen the implants work for both Cochlear and AB, but I've never met a person with Med-El....and it seems audiologists are not as familiar with Med-El here. However, I do know that the audiologists here are about 50/50 when it comes to troubleshooting and working with customer service between Cochlear and Med-El. I've seen the presentations of both The Nucleus 5 and the newer AB (which I cannot think of for the life of me right now), and was impressed by both, but my gut is still telling me Cochlear, and the husband feels the same way as well. It'll be interesting :)
oh good, unsolicited advice can so often offend. :)
I totally hear you on the money part; it's crazy how much the whole thing comes to, worth it or not! And you're right about the dependency; it can be hard to be equally good with both implants. However, that can be true even if they're done at the same time. I guess I've just always been paranoid about knocking out all useable hearing before one is sure the CI will work. I know you're doing all the right things to find out if it would be successful, and it sure sounds like as long as the anatomy is good, it totally would be, I'm just a paranoid kind of person. :) I'm also probably pretty uncharacteristic of an oral deaf educator, so there you have it. Overall, it seems like as long as you put the effort into do the auditory rehab, you can be successful with one, or two. I do think a lot of the time, the second implant isn't trained as well, or as much, as the first because the first already works, so why belabor another? Not that that's good logic, I just wonder if that's where it's coming from. Like a kid that just gets the first implant, that kid has to wear just that one implant all the time and learn everything with it. Then if you get a second one later, you train it for a few minutes alone every day, and that's probably all. Your brain rarely has to depend on it. Of course, that's all theory and I'm sure your research would be more accurate. :)
That's awesome that you do the early intervention, especially since you are kind of in both worlds (oral and signing). I love the unbiased approach! Even though I'm totally for using speech and residual hearing (or CIs), I know it's not right for everyone and always want people to have all the information.
The biggest thing for bilateral...is partially money to be honest. If I did bilateral, if insurance does cover portions of doing bilateral, then it would be cheaper to do bilateral at once, instead of one now and the other later. But again, I'm not going to definitely decide until I find out what my insurance would cover, and that won't happen until after I find out if I'm all cleared by the MRI.
The other thing that makes me wonder if I should do bilateral at the same time, is if doing them at the same time would change the dependency on a certain side of the implant. Often times when people are implanted on one side, and then later implanted on the other side, 80% of their functioning for hearing is done on one implant, the first one. The second one is mostly useful for environmental sounds. I have yet to do more research on this, but I don't want to put the time and effort into it until A - I know it's even a possibility, and B - my final comprehensive presentation is over for my master's :) Fortunately the MRI is after the final comp, so it'll work out :)
I was leaning towards Cochlear as well, just cause I am an early interventionists for families with children who have a hearing loss. :) I've seen the implants work for both Cochlear and AB, but I've never met a person with Med-El....and it seems audiologists are not as familiar with Med-El here. However, I do know that the audiologists here are about 50/50 when it comes to troubleshooting and working with customer service between Cochlear and Med-El. I've seen the presentations of both The Nucleus 5 and the newer AB (which I cannot think of for the life of me right now), and was impressed by both, but my gut is still telling me Cochlear, and the husband feels the same way as well. It'll be interesting :)
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I totally hear you on the money part; it's crazy how much the whole thing comes to, worth it or not! And you're right about the dependency; it can be hard to be equally good with both implants. However, that can be true even if they're done at the same time. I guess I've just always been paranoid about knocking out all useable hearing before one is sure the CI will work. I know you're doing all the right things to find out if it would be successful, and it sure sounds like as long as the anatomy is good, it totally would be, I'm just a paranoid kind of person. :) I'm also probably pretty uncharacteristic of an oral deaf educator, so there you have it. Overall, it seems like as long as you put the effort into do the auditory rehab, you can be successful with one, or two. I do think a lot of the time, the second implant isn't trained as well, or as much, as the first because the first already works, so why belabor another? Not that that's good logic, I just wonder if that's where it's coming from. Like a kid that just gets the first implant, that kid has to wear just that one implant all the time and learn everything with it. Then if you get a second one later, you train it for a few minutes alone every day, and that's probably all. Your brain rarely has to depend on it. Of course, that's all theory and I'm sure your research would be more accurate. :)
That's awesome that you do the early intervention, especially since you are kind of in both worlds (oral and signing). I love the unbiased approach! Even though I'm totally for using speech and residual hearing (or CIs), I know it's not right for everyone and always want people to have all the information.
Anyhow, I've hijacked your post enough. :)
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