An Immediate Benefit

One benefit that I immediately got from my cochlear implant was rather unexpected. Not my speech comprehension skills, which are a work in progress, but my own speech. Even with the new auditory input to my brain, my vocal facilities have somehow managed to match the words I hear daily. I can hear how people talk, and in turn I can produce sounds out of my own mouth to match how people talk.

Plus, I can "self-correct" my own speech based on feedback from other people. Sometimes after I say something, I get a blank stare, a perplexed expression, or a tell-tale sign of pretending to understand - or bluffing, which consists of nodding and smiling while obviously having no clue what I said. Side note: for those of who don't know, deaf people bluff all the time. ALL THE TIME. More than you realize. I know it's a bad habit and it's not healthy, but we do it anyway. Anyway, whenever I say something and I could tell the other person didn't understand, I instinctively know which words I ran together or mispronounced or just mumbled. So I repeat what I said but in a slower, louder, and clearer manner while making my diction more precise and accurate.

After a few months of practice making words clearer out of my own mouth, the effects are amazing. I can now go into a loud bar with music blaring in all directions, and I can project my voice to the person I'm talking to and they'd understand most of what I had said. Pre-CI, communication in a bar with hearing people was downright hopeless. Recently, I was surprised that a complete stranger had understood every word I said when I spoke to her at a bar. Plus, my friend commented that my speech has been getting better and amazingly better, also in a very noisy environment.

I used to try to talk louder by (unknowingly) raising the pitch of my voice and over-enunciating, which didn't help at all. Now I can talk louder without changing the pitch of my voice, but by speaking from deep in my diaphragm. I still do enunciate more than I normally do when talking louder, but in a way that feels more natural.

When I first got my CI, I did not expect this kind of benefit to manifest itself this early, if at all. It seems that my speech is coming on faster than my comprehension skills, but I suppose that's how it normally goes with CI recipients who were born deaf but also had speech therapy growing up.

You really do need to be able to hear yourself talk in order to talk clearly enough for most hearing people to understand what you're saying.