Rehab for Adults: Activities You Can Do Immediately After Activation

After surgery and recovery, it’s time for the exciting next step in your hearing journey—activating your implant.

This is a time that can be both exciting and a little scary. Everyone’s experience of this time is unique to them.

If you’d like to read about people’s experiences or chat with a user, you can join our HearPeers forum. Try searching ‘activation’ and you will find lots of posts discussing experiences. Here are some examples: “Activation day in August was unbelievable!”; “Very weird!”; “I could hear these little beeps. I asked my audiologist what was beeping. She laughed and pointed to my husband sitting across the room… texting the kids. I could hear his phone beeping when he was dialing!”

Here are some ways to help you familiarize yourself with the new sounds you might hear through your technology:

1. Listening Around the Home

Do this with a friend or family member. Go for a walk around the house and explore different sounds, for example the microwave beeping, the sound of a fan, the clicks of feet walking on a hard floor, paper rustling. Focus carefully on what you hear. Discuss what the sound is like with each other.

2. Technology Fun

All our technology makes particular sounds. These might be sounds you’ve not heard for quite some time. Sit and spend some time playing with your phone. Try listening to different notification sounds and different ring tones. Perhaps you can now make use of these sounds to be alerted to a message or call! Devices such as laptops and printers make many sounds. Try listening to the start-up sound of your laptop, the email notification sounds, and the sounds of devices such as printers as they are working.

3. Read-Along

This is an easy, no-stress way to help with speech understanding. You will need a friend or family member to help you. Choose a book, newspaper article, or something on your phone or tablet. Your helper simply reads the passage aloud, while running their finger along under the words as they say them. You can also try simply reading aloud to yourself. This will help you to get used to the sound of your own voice. We call this activity ‘speech tracking’.

4. Captions and Subtitles

Many TV, movie, and streaming entertainment services today include subtitle options. Turn the subtitles on, so that you can read and listen to the words simultaneously. If you have a favorite show or movie, watch over and over again. This will help you become familiar with the way words sound through your new technology.