Well, Thanksgiving went better than I expected. The restaurant was a nightmare, but I knew that to start with. The distortion in my non implanted ear is so bad that it was just lot of nasty noise and made speech reading very very hard. Even with my husband and daughter, and I usually do fairly well with them. The food was good, and once we left (all stuffed) we headed over to my sister-in-law's house. Much better. Still hard, as they are not used to looking at me while speaking and would sometimes talk over each other, but it was a bit easier to feel a part of things there. My granddaughter was a delight, and helped save the entire day. We all had fun just watching her as she is such a cheerful 15 month old.