The majority of experts agrees: Binaural hearing is important, bilateral Cochlear Implant is desirable for bilaterally severely hearing impaired or deaf people. The reason why this is not routine for all candidates yet, is mostly lack of funding.
Parents and CI candidates may consider to pay for the second implant when they read the personal report by Arlene Romoff“Listening Closely: A Journey to Bilateral Hearing” where she describes how bilateral CIs impact behavior.
See http://arleneromoff.blogspot.com/2012/01/cochlear-implant-bilateral-wow-moment.html
Please find below an excerpt from the story:
Cochlear Implant Bilateral WOW moment
The strangest thing happened today — this CI old-timer, who has been using a CI for 14 years, and has been bilateral for three years, just had another WOW bilateral realization today. I do believe that my bilateral hearing continues to get «better»!
No, I wasn’t in a testing booth, I was at an antique show — haven’t been to one in many, many months. This one was indoors in a cavernous event space — with additional exhibitors outside. It was after browsing the entire show that I realized that a lot of dealers were talking to me today — and I wasn’t even looking at them, but I never asked for a repeat, and for most of them, I answered without even looking back at them. I didn’t think it was necessary to look at their faces to continue conversing with them?
This is definitely a case of my bilateral hearing continuing to get «better» — and me getting more used to hearing casually — being able to hear people from all directions and wider distances. And the more that happens, the more casual my reaction — just talking back to them without consciously thinking «WOW.» In fact, it wasn’t until AFTER doing this for about two hours that I realized that my behavior had changed. Oh, my!
Reality check: this doesn’t happen all the time, and much depends on acoustics, background noise, voices, etc. — but the reality is that this NEVER happened to me as consistently as it did today — not in decades or miles of antique browsing.
Arlene