Despite the complication that happened during the revision surgery on my left ear, my recovery was very smooth and easy. I had no balance issues or dizziness, and once again didn’t even bother to get the painkiller prescription filled, as Tylenol was more than sufficient for the (very little) bit of pain I had. I do seem to have lost my sense of taste on that side, which is not great as it appears that the taste didn’t fully return on the other side after the last surgery. I can still taste some with the back of my tongue, so I’m just glad I didn’t lose it entirely.

Activation was this morning. I learned after the fact that they had not been able to test the new implant after the surgery because it was so late that the audiologist had gone home (can’t blame her — it was almost 10pm by the time I woke up!), so I had no idea if it would even work.

However, it turned out fine. She did the test first, and said it all looked good, so after the initial (tedious) setting of the volume for each of the 16 electrodes, she switched it on and I could understand her immediately. It wasn’t quite as clear as the right side, or the original on the left before it started failing, but it didn’t sound like beeps like the other two activations did, so I expect that I just need a little ramp-up time for it to start sounding clearer, which is pretty typical.

I’ve now got the usual activation setup: five increasing volume levels. Because I maxed those out really quickly last time, I asked her to increase the volume jump between levels this time. She agreed that the same was likely to happen again given that I could already understand her, so she did; she said that I might only get to level 3 before I’m at my optimum volume, but that’s fine by me.

The way that AB processors handle Bluetooth for bilateral recipients (since classic BT can only connect to one device at a time) is that one processor acts as the “primary” which actually connects to your phone or whatever, and it is paired with the other processor to enable stereo streaming. My right one had been the primary since I was implanted last summer; at this appointment I asked her to switch to the left so I could optionally remove the right processor and stream only to the left ear in order to give it more practice. She did, but I discovered when I got on a work call that they weren’t paired properly, so I only heard the streaming on the left. However, she actually had some time open this afternoon so I popped back over there (luckily, it’s only about 5 minutes away) and she fixed it.

So now, all is well.