My name is Les, I'm 80
I've had a cochlear implant for a year.
During the nineteen nineties my hearing got steadily worse and it
got that the hearing aids couldn't keep up with this, even even better
hearing aids and eventually in the early two thousands
I gave a series of lectures by requests to MSc students and I had to ask students
to write questions down so I could easily put the answer on the board it was often
mathematical questions where we have to write something down.
I felt this wasn't really good enough because it was time consuming and I didn't
like imposing.
I found that friends and family were very sympathetic and helpful
and doing things like
speaking slowly and carefully
occasionally writing things down and then
sometimes my wife would interpret for me. My wife and I knew each other so well
I didn't have to say much to her and she didn't have to write much down in reply.
Only in 2014 my wife said something really needed to be done about my
hearing after I had the implant, I came back to St Thomas' for the switch on and
when they finally turned the sound up enough
for me to hear it, I jumped. I think everyone was very pleased with it at
this stage it was working. When the implant was first switched on I
started hearing all types of sounds around me
I think the most noticeable one was high heels clicking which I haven't heard for a long time.
As I was adjusting to the implant
I started becoming aware of more sounds like my own breathing, wind howling in
the chimney and the children next door playing in the garden, but I still found
face-to-face communication difficult. It was difficult to
differentiate between male and female voices. Face-to-face, I did
get some clues from watching the speaker's face and as time went on
things did get better. To start with I did listening practice as suggested
using the computer, the online resources there and was meticulous about this and I did
a session most days. I eventually found
this wasn't really the answer.
I moved on and came back to St Thomas' to see the speech and language therapist.
She gave me the various exercises. At first she typed so that I
could see things in the laptop as well as speaking and as things gradually got
better I could pick up cues by watching her face, see her lips moving
and then at one stage she tried putting a mask over her mouth so I couldn't
see that, to see how well I got on. I found the therapy helpful because I got
immediate feedback. Where necessary things could be repeated and this did help me
build up my confidence.
Overall one year on, the implant has been well worthwhile.
Things aren't perfect, the one outstanding issue is
I cannot use a telephone
The feeling is I will get to the stage when I can use a telephone.