The Second Cochlear Implant

Hi again everyone. I know you’ve been waiting with baited breath for my follow-up blog about my second implant. So, not being one to disappoint my adoring public, here goes!

As I’ve said before, I had my second surgery on my left ear in early February 2014… on a Saturday (Jeremy Hunt, please take note, that looks like a 24 7 NHS from where I’m sitting). The surgery went really well—so well in fact that the consultant let me leave on the Saturday night. One issue we were worried about before surgery, was how I’d hear for the 24 hours or so when I had the bandage round my head, as we thought the magnet wouldn’t be strong enough to attach my right implant to my head. Fortunately, I seem to have either a really strong magnet or a really thin head and, although it wasn’t very secure, it stayed on… meaning that within an hour of waking up, I was able to listen to 5Live to check the football scores… priorities eh? In the interest of adding some ‘colour’ and ‘period detail’ to this blog, I’ve googled and can tell you that my team lost 2-0 to West Ham!

So, I then had the 3 week or so wait to be switched on. We thought that as, prior to getting implanted, my left side was my better side; I’d adapt quite well to the implant and be able to hear at least as well, if not better, with that one than with the one on my right. Twas not to be! Even after a number of trips to the hospital for mapping where various settings were fiddled with, I still don’t hear as well on my left as on my right. The sound seems to be slightly echoey. To get it in to context though, it’s still a million times better than how I was hearing with my hearing aid on that side, so a huge result for me.

The reasoning behind giving blind people 2 implants is to help with direction of sound. This has certainly helped me in terms of locating the direction of sounds and, although maybe not quite as successful as my first implant, I definitely don’t regret having 2!

The big switch on!

Firstly, an apology for being very slow in updating the blog—it has been quite a few days!

My switch-on was scheduled for 1.30 on the 19th September so my wife and I travelled down from Buckinghamshire at lunchtime to give us plenty of time. After braving the tube and a little walk in the rain we arrived at the hospital and went through to my appointment. Unfortunately, the actual sound processor I was going to have hadn’t arrived from the manufacturer (Advanced Bionics) yet, but they had another one (same make and model) that I could use in the meantime. The only difference was that it was not the colour I had asked for… not that that really matters to me! 😉

The first step was to fit the processor which was connected to the computer. The electrodes were tested and I heard a variety of beep sounds at different pitches from quite low to quite high. There are 20 electrodes in all and the audiologist was testing a few at a time so this was fairly quick. She then switched it on…

I have to admit here that my first impressions were… well… underwhelming. While I’d tried to keep my expectations low, it was hard not to hope for miracles! Everything sounded muffled and pretty awful quite frankly. The audiologist cranked up the volume a little which helped but it still wasn’t great. Thinking back, it was probably better than I thought it was at the time. I could hear voices but it was like they were mumbling. My wife says that she could tell that I was hearing more simply because she wasn’t having to repeat everything that my audiologist said anymore. We went for a little walk around the hospital to hear different noises and I could hear various sounds such as footsteps, the lift etc. The audiologist had given me 3 different programmes to play with (there is a maximum of 5 available). The 3 I had were simply louder volumes. She said that in the 24 hours between my switch-on and my second appointment, I’d probably go through those programmes, as my brain got used to the sounds and wanted more. She disabled the volume for the first day (presumably to stop inexperienced users turning it up and blowing their heads off)!

So then it was the journey home. We just avoided rush hour and had an incident free journey home. On the tube, I could hear little snippets of the announcements. For example, I couldn’t hear the name of the station we were at, but I could hear things like ‘this is the Bakerloo line, change here for the Jubilee line’.
During the course of the evening, I tried various things like listening to music, audiobook, radio and computer. Music was fine. I could recognise songs that were familiar to me. The audiobook, I could hear some words but not all. The radio was just noise. I couldn’t make out words. My computer sounded slightly different but I could hear what my screen reader was saying. All of these things were out loud as I didn’t have suitable headphones.

The second day of switch was more exciting for me, as I turned a corner during my second session. The audiologist changed the volume settings and added several programmes of volume for me. This made a huge difference to me and I found that I could hear the audiologist with just my implant, and hold a conversation with her. Again, we went for a wander to get a drink and I started to be able to identify sounds like lift announcements. I also became more aware of environmental sounds- asking my wife what the noise was, saying it sounded like a trolley. In fact it was one of those large commercial wheelie bins, so not far off!
I then had my first rehab appointment. The speech therapist was very keen for me to take things slowly, but laughed when she found out about all my experimenting! She tried a few simple things with me like making sounds and asking me to say whether there were one, two or three of them. She then said some words and I had to say whether they were long or short. She seemed quite impressed when I started to tell her what some of the words were, and said I was showing off! She then showed my wife a category exercise, where I was told a category like flowers, and then had to repeat each word as it was said (rose, daffodil etc). She also suggested that I listen to Victoria read a book while I follow it in Braille.
I went off home, feeling really pleased with my progress, and enjoyed repeating to Victoria all the train announcements, as I heard them! It was a long day but I felt that I had a great result.

The eve of switch on

I’ve been quiet over the last week as there hasn’t really been much to write about… I’ve pretty much just been reading my kindle all the time! 😉 But, 3 weeks after my operation, it will finally be time to switch on my cochlear implant tomorrow at 1:30. It’s fair to say that I’m getting quite nervous now. I’ve tried very hard to keep my expectations in check but it is hard not to let my imagination run away with me about all the things I’ll shortly be hearing. I’ve been chatting to people online who’ve had cochlear implants, including a guy in Australia who had his switch-on yesterday—and is doing amazingly well. I’ve found it really reassuring to discuss everything with people who have been there, done it and got the t-shirt (or the rechargeable battery pack to be more accurate…)

I had the first of my three visits this week to the hospital yesterday afternoon to see the consultant. This was the shortest appointment I think I’ve ever had… after over an hour’s wait we went in to the consulting room, where he had a quick look to see if the scar had healed ok, said everything was ‘perfect’ and away we went!

Tomorrow’s appointment should last a little bit longer than that… well it is scheduled to last for a couple of hours. We then go up again on Friday for a follow-up appointment, so, all-in-all, I’m clocking up the train miles. Chiltern rail should give me a loyalty discount!

We’re planning to make a video of the switch on which I’ll share bits of on the blog. I’ll do my best to update it tomorrow, though with everything else going on, it might be Friday before I next post. For the geeks amongst you who want to know exactly the type of implant I’m getting it is this one:
http://www.advancedbionics.com/uk/en/naida_ci_q70.html

Wish me luck… 