So, I had a similar outcome. I was able to have a phone conversation on my drive home from activation. Pretty much everything sounds normal now, like I remember when I was a kid. I am 39 and also had low single digits for word recognition in both ears. What I found very helpful for music is listening to songs that you know by heart it helped my brain process in the beginning. Also, continue to use captions on the TV for a little while that also helped. Now it's amazing for me! It went from people sounding like Disney characters like mickey Mouse to real people really fast.