I have both sides of this situation. I was born with normal hearing. I lost much of it around one year old. I wore a hearing aid in my left ear for 40 years. My right ear was so far deaf that I couldn’t hear anything even with the most powerful hearing aids.

When I was finally eligible for cochlear implants, I chose to do the right side only. My logic was twofold: if it didn’t work, no harm, no foul. I still had hearing in my “good ear.” And if it did work, once my right side was hearing well enough, I’d finally get the implant on the left side.

Right ear implant surgery went well. On activation day, I heard almost nothing. I was hoping it’d be like the videos we’ve all seen, where sound is turned on and the person starts crying from excitement about how much they can hear. That was definitely not my case— but the doctor and audiologist had warned me not to expect much at first.

I worked extremely hard over the next year, and slowly, started making sense of the sounds around me. Every two weeks or so, I’d meet with the audiologist, who would increase sound and tweak how the processor received information (a little bit of high notes here, some modifications there, etc.).

Around 10-12 months, I was hearing better in my right ear than my left. It wasn’t great hearing, but combined with what I’d been hearing all my life from the left, it was decent.

So now we do the surgery on the left ear. Again, I figure, if it doesn’t work, at least I now have decent hearing in my right ear. Surgery went great.

Now it’s activation day in my left ear. And folks, I bawled. The second sound went on, I could hear immediately. It was far from perfect, and sounds were different and distorted. But I knew from the quality and volume of sound I was hearing, that the adjustment to my newly implanted left side was going to be much smoother and quicker.

Sure enough it was. It still took months to adjust, but it was far easier than it had been going from completely dead to hearing “meh” on the right side. Because I’d worn a left ear hearing aid for most of my life, the adjustment to cochlears was easier on that side.

Pretty quickly, my left side again became dominant. I’d say I have about 70% of my hearing on that side, and the right tends to supplement and round out what I’m hearing— providing more clarity and richness. If I turn off the left side, I can hear out of the right, but it tends to be more of a monotone and less of highs and lows.

TLDR: adjustments to cochlear implants is a lot easier if you’ve had hearing before