Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Upgrading

While I was at the audiologist last week, I gave her instructions on how she can order an upgrade on my behalf.. which involves paperwork to Cochlear Ltd and my health fund.

But while I was there I got to see the new speech processor which looks lovely and shiny!! It also looks a lot smaller which hopefully means it will not be as heavy on my ear.

So my audiologist put in an order for it the very next day (I am going for the boring beige colour, though the white was very appealling!!) and yesterday I got my paperwork from Cochlear, which I simply hand over to my health fund and they can pay for it!

I already have my new "switch on" day, which is the 30th April. I probably could've had it done a lot earlier but I'm getting married in about 2 weeks and apparently the sound will be different so I think I'll stick with what I know for my Big Day :)

This is perfect timing for an upgrade too as the last couple of days, my speech processor has been cutting out for no reason. I changed the coil over and it seems to have behaved itself since then.

I can not WAIT to get my new speech processor with all it's new features!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey which health fund are you with? What kind of benefits do you get with them having an implant? We are having trouble getting them to o.k an upgrade for ours at the moment, am interested!

Nikki said...

Anon: I was with HBF but I swapped to Medibank Private. Medibank Private doesn't make you jump through hoops, all they require is the audiologist submitting paperwork saying you require an upgrade. So so easy.

Is covered under hospital cover and if you swap from your current fund, there is no waiting periods. Your current speech processor has to be out of warranty.

Email this lady, she's excellent at explaining it all:
Rosie_Hailes@medibank.com.au

The N5 is much lighter and smaller than the Freedom and uses less batteries. I don't notice too much difference with sound tho.