Definitely your CI devices are life-changing for you! Wow, that must have been truly something, hearing again after so many years of not be able to do so.... I was six when I got my very first bone-conduction hearing aid, a Sonotone body aid with head band and oscillator. Without hearing aids I can hear some, just not completely or normally, and hearing speech without hearing aids is difficult so, yes, I was trained early-on in childhood to lipread and still depended upon that in conjunction with the hearing aids I wore through the years. Lip-reading is challenging because some words look the same on the lips and also not everyone enunciates clearly. Some people cover their lips with a mustache and beard, which REALLY makes lip-reading challenging! I can always tell, too, when someone is speaking English as a second language -- the muscles around the mouth and jaw move somewhat differently.
The day I was fitted with my bilateral BAHAs back in 2001 was fifty years after I had gotten that first body aid. What a difference! A friend was with me and she said later that the expression on my face when I was hearing bilaterally was one that mixed joy, astonishment, delight and a range of other emotions all together at once. The thing, though, that she noticed later even before I was aware of it, was that when we were walking down the hallway to the cafeteria to get some lunch before heading home, I was no longer looking intently at her most of the time rather than towards where I was going, and we were having a back-and-forth conversation. I could hear her regardless of which side of me she was walking, I didn't need to depend on lip-reading or automatically place myself so that the hearing aid would be on the correct ("better") side to pick up whatever she said.
At the vending machine in the cafeteria she talked to me as I was putting my money into the machine and making my choice, and I reflexively responded to her without needing to turn my head to see what she was saying. Even though the cafeteria was noisy, too, I was still able to hear and differentiate her voice, which had not been possible when I wore one bone conduction aid with all the sound pouring into the one side.
When we sat down to eat, she told me what she was observing and we were both amazed. Later when we got in the car to head home, when I started up the car, I almost immediately reached to lower the volume of the car radio -- and THAT was cool, too! Normally I don't play music in the car when I've got a passenger, but did turn a CD on a few minutes before arriving at our destination and explained that I wanted to test what the difference might be before the BAHAs and after I had them. I also could hear my friend so much better in the car, compared to the drive up, because now I had a sound processor on each side of my head instead of only one. Bilateral DOES make a difference!
Yeah, hearing rain is neat, isn't it? Thunder, too. Without the BAHAs I can hear it only when it's really, really loud. With them, I hear it when it is just starting to rumble. And the birds twittering and singing -- YES!! Even bees if one is standing in a garden among the plants and they are buzzing around the flowers..... Without amplification, I can hear a car horn if I'm standing or walking nearby but definitely when I've got my BAHAs on I realize just how loud they really are! Refrigerators are loud, too. People who are not hearing-impaired take all these sounds for granted, and they really don't realize how noisy the world actually is!
Yes, indeed, I have a computer -- 15" MacBook Pro -- and I'm thinking I'll set the Mini Mic 2 up with it for streaming the music and video sounds here. I also have a 12" MacBook for travel and will continue to use the bone conduction Shokz headphones with that machine. I don't watch much TV but do want to get the TV streamer set up because I'm in a condominium apartment and the TV is in the bedroom. Now I'll be able to have the TV set at a volume which is really comfortable for me without worrying about disturbing the neighbors above me or below me! Ditto for when I'm out in the living room listening to music or watching a movie on my computer.....
Yes, one thing I love about streaming with my iPhone is that I can have the iPhone in my pocket and walk all over the house and enjoy the music -- wow! I've even gone for a walk to the kiosk mailbox doing that, just because I can, and it's neat, a whole new experience. My wireless Shokz headphones lose connectivity when I go out of range of the computer when I'm using it with them; presumably the Mini Mic 2 will do the same, but maybe it has a greater range. I'll know once I get the thing set up!
