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.
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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