Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go

Last week I had a mapping - we reduced the volume of the high frequencies on the left CI, reduced the volume of the low frequencies on the right CI, and also on the right, redistributed the frequencies along the electrodes a bit. It usually takes a couple of weeks to adjust, and I'm not there yet, but it does sound better than the previous mapping.  Quite a lot, in fact, so while I don't think this is the end state by any means, I do feel like I'm heading in the right direction. I have another mapping next month, and the manufacturer's clinical specialist is going to be there, which should be interesting. But in the meantime I'm pretty happy with the progress.  Today a friend who has been living on the East Coast for a couple of years was in town, and we had lunch.  He told me that he could tell how much better I was hearing just from the conversation that we had at the crowded and fairly noisy little Mexican place we were in. He's right, of course - I...

It's kind of odd, that most of the noticeable advances I've made in my ability to listen to music have been while I'm watching TV - background music, more or less.  There was the singing a few weeks ago, and then last night there was a song in the program I was watching while I was on the treadmill - just a guy singing, no band or anything, and it sounded wonderfully clear. But that only ever happens when I'm listening with both CIs.  I do, for the most part, but I'm still trying to do rehab with the left because it's not really completely stable yet.  At my last mapping we ended up reducing the volume of the lower frequencies a bit - not by design, but because that's how it ended up using the standard mapping process.   But I think it was too much.  It's been over a month and the high frequencies are still distorted, and it doesn't really even sound like what I've been used to in the early stages.  On the right I had the beepy Mickey Mouse s...