Mr Hill (56), who featured in the Otago Daily Times last month, was diagnosed with the rare brain disorder, superficial siderosis, in 2004.
He had experienced many side effects associated with SS, including deafness, and his wife Trish communicated with him using a white board and sign language as he had been totally deaf for more than a year.
In late August, he went to Christchurch for a cochlear implant, but last month he said there was a huge chance it would not work.
Mr Hill spent three days in Christchurch last week getting an external processor fitted and "mapped".
Mostly, he could hear Mrs Hill the first time she spoke, although he was having extreme difficulty with male voices.
A fellow SS survivor knew five people with cochlear implants, and two had been a year before settling down to hearing properly. "The other three were more like six months, so I need patience," he said.
His audiologist was impressed with his progress.
Of the 26 members in the international SS support group which Mr Hill runs, only one, an Australian man, has had a successful implant - "so I dearly wish to follow in his footsteps".
Mr Hill is still trying to track down SS survivors - he believed there was one in Auckland and another in the Christchurch area.
