Juliet England: My deafie diary part 18 – my cochlear implant switch on

It’s the morning of the big switch-on, my nerves are already ripped to tatters, and I’ve barely left home before the day’s first problem kicks in. The bus driver en route to the station is, of course, wearing a mask, and he’s trying to say something I can’t hear. I only understand we’re going nowhere until whatever is troubling him is resolved.

As it turns out, my disabled pass just isn’t valid at that time of morning. I’m more than happy to pay the fare, but it’s taken minutes of my fellow passengers staring at me in that uniquely British, pained, gaze-averting silence before I work out what I have to do. I arrive to get the train to Oxford nearly in tears.

Anna, a middle-aged audiologist with a grey ponytail, holds up an iPad so I can read her words behind her face covering. Predictable hilarity ensues – I am just going to bed, You can cook your implant, Your hair is very pink. (I almost wish it was, thinking about it.)

She leads me into the switch-on room, setting up her phone at eye level so I can read the captions, which, in here at least, are disappointingly accurate and therefore not the slightest bit funny.

Anna explains that she is going to start me off on the lowest programme. Heart pounding, I wait for this long-anticipated moment. As expected, though, I can just hear a lot of beeps and whistles. Equally, it’s hard to know what I am taking in from my non-implanted right ear, in which I still have my powerful hearing aid.

And, not unexpectedly, it takes a while to get used to the thing, which falls off my head repeatedly until we (or rather she) replaces the magnet with a stronger one. One the plus side, it certainly seems a lot more discreet than my hearing aids, the flat disc tucking neatly under my hair.

The sheer volume of stuff I’ve been given to go with the thing is astonishing, filling the entire rucksack I am handed. Every spare part possible seems provided, along with every eventuality covered from swimming to energetic exercise (not that there’s much chance of my being involved in either) and the bit you need if you’re travelling between Glasgow and Edinburgh on a sunny Wednesday in the third week of March.

Anna, of course, has other people to see. When the hour is up I leave, laden down like a pack pony and with an unfamiliar object attached to the side of my head – there’s no denying the thing feels very odd indeed.

Over the course of the next few days, I do what I usually do when faced with something I’m a little bit wary of. I ignore it completely.

Eventually, I rummage through all the bits again, the boxes and various manuals and documents, none of which leaves me very much the wiser. But I keep forcing myself to persist. After all, this equipment has simply cost the taxpayer too much money for me to ignore it.

There is a breakthrough of sorts when I notice that the beeps are bopping along in time to some music on the radio, which I can sort of hear in my other ear. I’m so excited by this I email a friend to tell her immediately. “Yay! It’s working!” she replies triumphantly.

The next sort-of breakthrough is my first virtual training session with another audiologist called Emma.

We spend ages trying to get a video call set up on my laptop, but both the NHS system and Teams let us down, leaving us in elbow-gnawing frustration, unable to communicate. Eventually we make do with WhatsApp, using Emma’s phone for me to read subtitles on.

She’s unbelievably patient and calm, telling me not to stress out, insisting that it’s all perfectly normal at this stage to feel overwhelmed, and to just hear beeps and whistles. She tells me that I don’t need to know how to use all the equipment now, but should just focus on the basics – the processor, the drying box you’re supposed to put it in at night, the batteries and their charger. To get into the habit of charging the thing up every night. She also shows me how to put the implant on to programme 2.

We do our first little exercise, with me trying to make out some numbers Emma is saying with her mouth covered. The first time she does this, she leaves her phone uncovered, so I can read her words as captions on her phone. (Reader, I cheated.) And the look of delight on her face when I get the numbers right is so heart-breaking that I feel obliged to own up immediately. She laughs, sighs, rolls her eyes, covers her phone, and we start again. This time, nothing.

But it will come. I’m due back in Oxford as I write this, for another appointment, the first in-person follow-up since the switch-on. And if I’ve learned one thing in the last couple of weeks, it’s that this is going to be a very long journey indeed.