Larry,If you were sitting here, I could remove and shutoff my hearing aid and hold a conversation with you using just the cochlear implant on the other ear.
I am one of the very small percentage of implantees who heard human voices at activation. Most implantees hear Minnie Mouse, beeps or Darth Vader at activation. The audiologist took a pair of scissors, trimmed the hair over the implant, placed the sound processor (looks like a hearing aid) over my left ear, placed the antenna/coil over the area she had trimmed. It's held on by an implanted rare earth magnet and a magnet in the antenna. Then she connected a cable from her computer to the sound processor. She had me remove my hearing aid from my right ear. She said "You won't hear anything but I am running diagnostics and checking the impedance of the electrodes in the implant." Then she said " I have the volume turned down so you aren't startled, I am turning it on. What do you hear?" I replied "I hear you talking." My wife said "Can he hear us?" and I responded "Yes Dear. I can hear you."
The tears began to flow and the audiologist left the room to get some tissues.
I can hear better in the mornings than evenings. I can't do well at all on the telephone or do well with television audio.
I hear music but it's crude. I do better with music that I was extremely familiar with as my brain has a memory of what that sounded like. All this is normal and I am months ahead of the average cochlear implant patient.The brain has to learn to recognize and handle this new electrical stimulation as sound and it takes a while. I talked with the audiologist last week when I went to get my 2nd "mapping" and she agrees. (Mapping is similar to adjusting the equalizer on a stereo system.) My extremely good performance is primarily fueled by two things. 1. The implanted ear was only deaf for 16 month. So the nerve and the brain are used to having excitation there. 2. I wear a hearing aid on the other ear.....and the good news.....it's only going to get better!
I am blessed!