After my hearing test last month revealed that my non-implanted ear had gotten worse since my last test in summer 2019, I scheduled a cochlear implant evaluation for that ear, which happened a couple weeks ago. It wasn’t a total shock that the audiologist said I qualified for a second CI. I saw the surgeon last Friday, and today I got the call from his office telling me that my health insurance had approved it. (I’m amazed that it happened this quickly; with my first one, I saw the surgeon in March and didn’t get the approval until May.) My surgery is on June 29th. I will be going with Advanced Bionics again, of course; since my clinic provides two processors, I plan to use both of them (one for each ear) and keep my Q90s as backups in case anything happens to the Marvels.

I do hope they can preserve at least a little of my natural hearing this time (they didn’t last time, but there wasn’t as much left in that ear by the time I got the CI there), just enough so that I’ll wake up if a fire alarm should go off while I’m asleep and not wearing my processors. As long as Ray’s with me I’m not too worried, but there are (very rare) occasions when we spend a night or two apart, usually if one or the other of us has a work conference or something. But he’s rigged our home automation to turn on all the lights in the house if a smoke alarm goes off, and hotels have deaf-accessible rooms if I’m the one traveling, so I think I’ll be okay even if I do lose all my residual hearing.

So, in two months I’ll be bilateral. And so I’ve changed the name of this blog since “Single-Sided Cochlear Implant” will no longer apply.