Juliet England: Diary of a cochlear implant journey – part 1

It’s one of those cold, clear and sunny December mornings, and I’m waiting outside my home to be picked up by my friend Kate, ahead of my first appointment about a possible cochlear implant at the John Radcliffe in Oxford.

“Kate,” I wail through the window when she rocks up, bang on time as always. “I’m scared.”

She jerks her head to the passenger seat.

“Just get in and shut up,” she says. We have known each other 20 years; she is all about tough love.

I know this is clichéd and icky, and duly cringe, but the receptionist once we get to the relevant department really is quite unbelievably lovely – warm, welcoming and kind.

She reminds me that today is an appointment of three parts – I’ll be having a hearing test then a session with a speech and language therapist, followed by a chat with the programme co-ordinator, and the chance to put my questions as everything is sort of brought together at the end.

We are seen within moments of the allotted time.

“Hello,” begins the first person I see, as though I am an especially imbecilic five-year-old. Then, very, very slowly…

“My name is Christina…”

My hackles are up. I may have a hearing loss but I don’t need to be spoken to like this.

The ice is broken, however, when I complain loudly that hearing tests are the most boring experience known to man or woman, and Christina grins and agrees. They are so boring for us as well, she sighs.

She looks in my ears. I keep quiet about having been a slouch at using olive oil to clear wax, but she says they’re clear.

“Don’t let me see you during the test,” I say. “If there is an option to cheat, I will take it.”

Kate seems to find this hilarious and promptly has a fit of hysterics. Some people are weird.

Anyway, the graph tells me what I knew already, my worsening hearing is now classed as a profound loss.

The next session is with the speech and language therapist, and the most fascinating of the morning’s three meetings. I am played some random words and sentences through a loud speaker with no other clues as to what they are. I catch almost nothing, and quickly lose interest so I gaze out of the second-floor window across the grey car park.

Then I am allowed to lipread as the therapist reads out the same information. The difference is startling, as I repeat almost all of them accurately. I get 10% of the words that come through the speaker, 92% of those the therapist reads out.

It means immediately that I am a suitable candidate for a cochlear implant, it seems.

By now, excitement is coursing through my veins. I was feeling ambivalent at best about the whole implant thing, but it’s starting to sound right for me.

That view is only enhanced when, after a lovely coffee break with Kate, who has returned from an appointment of her own, we see the programme co ordinator, Jane, who has already impressed me with the speed and efficiency of her responses to my various whiny emails ahead of this big day.

She talks me through the whole process from start to finish, and explains how implants work. Two of my biggest fears, the size of the processor and the length of time between switch-on and op, are laid to rest.

The processor isn’t that big, it can go under my hair. And, yes, I will have no hearing in the implanted ear between op and switch-on, but I will have an aid in the other one. Also, the period between the two isn’t quite as long as I feared.

And, yes, it’s a general anaesthetic, which can’t be totally without risks, but these are infinitesimally small, and it’s not as though it’s major surgery involving major organs.

Sure, I’ll have to train my brain to hear again, but there’ll be plenty of support.

When I hear the cost of the process – £30,000 – I nearly fall off my chair.

Kate shrugs.

“Sounds about right,” she says.

And that £30k doesn’t include the later costs of replacement batteries and the like.

I explain that I want to proceed to the next stage, and Jane says I’ll need my head examining (mind you, that’s been the case for a while), or rather a head scan to ensure there’s no physical reason I can’t be operated on. I’ll have the chance to meet the surgeon before he, or indeed she, drills into my skull, and there will be many, many appointments along the road to implantation.

But I feel readier than ever to proceed.

At a pre-Christmas family gathering, I tell my nearest and dearest they’ll no longer be able to mutter about me under their breath, safe in the knowledge that I can’t hear.

“Oh, yes we will,” trills my sister-in-law. (What is this, panto?)

“Now you’re waiting to hear!” quips my brother. I like that very much. I am, indeed, quite literally, waiting to hear.