Upgrade information

I just joined a cochlear implant form on yahoo and already someone with a Nucleus 5 has given me lots of information!!

I find the new Nucleus 5 processors are:

- Much more elegant design, look and feel. They are much smaller in size and much lighter on your ear to wear. Much more comfortable. Not that the Freedom wasn’t, but the new processor is better.

- I have found the new microphones on the Nucleus 5 to be more superior (for my listening situations). Also the microphone covers last much longer and are made of a new gortex material and you only have to change them now say every 6 months.

- I have found that the rechargeable batteries are great with the Nucleus 5. You have a choice of stand size (longer battery) or Compact Size (which is shorter and makes the processor even smaller overall). Having said this the standard rechargeable’s last longer in length of hours etc.

- The N5 takes 2 Zinc Air batteries compared to the Freedom taking 3 batteries. I find that with the new processor I get nearly as long battery life with 2 Zinc Air as I did with my Freedoms using 3 Zinc Air.

- The remote control is fantastic and so easy to use. It is even better if you have Bilateral Implants as you can control both processors at the press of one button to change to say Program 3 from Program 1 etc. The remote controls either one processor, or two processors at one time. It gives you the flexibility to adjust from EVERYDAY program to NOISE or BEAM programs very easily and therefore you have a better listening situation if you adjust your programs to suit the environment.

- It also has an Auto turn off feature so that it turns itself off after not being on the ear/head etc after 2 minutes. Handy feature.

- It also has Auto Telecoil feature which is great when at home and the home phone rings. If you have it in Auto-T mode, when you answer the phone the Telecoil turns on automatically and turns off automatically after you hang up thereby enhancing your telephone listening experience. I used to never you Telecoil on my Freedoms as I was to lazy to press the Telecoil button, but now that it is automatic, I use it and can actually hear better on the telephone with it.

- I also find that the new software with Nucleus 5 allows me to hear better in noise. Listening in noisy places is always a bit harder for everyone and something none of us like, but with this new processor I find I survive better in noise.

- Overall I am very happy with the new Nucleus 5. Having said this, you still have to get mapped and tuned to suit you as an individual and it takes time to get your new maps set the way you like them.

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!!!

Insurance

Documentation for upgrading the speech processor has finally come out. The documentation is fantastic, it lists all the health funds and the contacts.

My current fund will only upgrade after a lot of fuss. In fact, they didn't get back to me when I contacted them about it.

Medibank Private, on the other hand, are fantastic. I replied and got all the answers I wanted, including they will upgrade with no fuss, as long as the audiologist is happy to put in the claim paperwork on the clients behalf!

So, so easy!

So I swapped funds, the great thing being that there are no waiting periods if your cover from the previous fund is the same as the cover in the new fund!

Thank you, Australian Health System!

T switch

I visited the audiologist who made the t-switch an actual program, rather than pressing 2 buttons at once.

It's been fantastic ever since, it's much faster to change over and can hear on the phone so much better!!!

Wearing out

The button I press to get my "telephone" program on my CI is wearing out. It's so hard to swap over and that is a real pain when the phone is ringing and you want to answer it right away :(

In other news, the rebate code for the new processors have come out so hopefully I will be able to get somewhere when asking health insurance companies if they cover upgrades :)

Clean it out!

Lately I've been getting Stu (my partner) to repeat himself a lot. This morning I finally twigged that this has been happening more frequently

Me: Is my hearing getting worse?
Stu: (exasperated) YES!!

Ooops. So today when the batteries died (at work) I grabbed a screen cleaner wipe, opened up everything I could...then saw how filthy it was in the microphone area. So cleaned that up and put it back on and VOILA!!! OMG, the difference is amazing, I can hear all the little things again!!

I emailed Stu and told him it was dirt covering the microphone and he was very happy, LOL

So should clean that more often :P This explains why I've been turning up the volume just to hear normal convos, lol

Screen wipes are awesome :)

Insurance

I've started thinking about upgrades to my CI, which cost craploads of money so thought better check if my health fund covers it.

Apparently they don't.

I try to talk to a company that I've heard DOES cover upgrades. They have no freaking idea what I'm talking about.

I send out billions of emails to different companies to see if they'll cover a new upgrade, then they reply needing medicare numbers.

Medicare tells me there are thousands of numbers and just fob me off.

I try my audiologist and my ENT for *any* sort of information.

In the meantime I find out there is actually a new processor out !!!

I've spoken to Cochlear numerous times now, they don't have a rebate code for the new processor yet (too new?) but they gave me the old rebate code. They tell me they've dealt with MY insurance company who do cover upgrades, as does the one who originally had no freaking idea what i'm talking about.

I can't believe how freaking difficult it is to get cover for an upgrade. It's like a hearing aid for gods sake, you get covered for upgrading those!!!

*cries*

Swimming pools

Cochlear Ltd advertise the CI's as being splashproof. They even have a picture of a child in a pool wearing their CI. I can tell everyone that this is not true coz after a bit of splashing in the pool yesterday, it completely buggered up!!! Wouldn't have been so bad if I was just at mum's but we were socialising with friends so I was even more stressed out about it!! I managed to get sound out of it, but there was definately something wrong!

It dried out overnight and it's all working fine again, but I thought it was ironic that my non-splashproof hearing aid fared better than my splashproof CI.

Movies without subtitles

I am still really useless at watching movies without subtitles.

My boyfriend is all excited because he has all these downloaded movies that we can watch (via the laptop) on our new TV. None of these movies have subtitles and I watched a couple last night and although I can follow the storyline, I pretty much miss everything they say.

Watching movies without understanding them is very boring.