The day before surgery and in the middle of preparing for leaving the boys in Stuart's capable hands, I thought it might be helpful to jot down a few notes on what's going to happen...
Tonight I'll head to London with my Mum, to stay overnight in an Airbnb. Tomorrow we have to be at the hospital at 7.30am, me with an empty stomach. I don't do well without breakfast, fortunately the Airbnb is just 5 minutes walk from the hospital, so hopefully Mum won't have to deal with me collapsing on her halfway!
The operation to implant my left cochlear should take place in the morning, typically 1.5-2 hours, but I'm told it can take longer if access to the cochlear is tricky (they have to squeeze past the facial nerve and the auditory nerve to get there), so it all depends on the exact positioning of these nerves in my head. All being well, I should be discharged the same day, as this is a straightforward outpatient procedure that the surgeon carries out every week.
I'm told it's 1-2 weeks to get back to 100% after the operation, but it varies a lot. During this time, I will have just one hearing aid on, in my right ear. 6 months ago I'd have hated the idea of this. But last autumn I had a series of ear infections in my left ear, so I could only wear my right aid for several weeks. And actually, it was OK. I'm glad I had those infections now, so the prospect of living with just one hearing aid in is no longer nearly as daunting!
6 weeks later (on the 1st May) I will go back to the hospital for the "switch-on" appointment. At this point I have to stop wearing my right hearing aid, and only wear the CI device on my left ear. This is the scary and difficult bit. This is when I find out if the surgery was successful, and I find out how much I can hear. I'm told that, to start with, it can range from hearing lots of sounds, although with distortion (so peoples' voices will sound like Donald Duck) to hearing very little, just clicks and beeps, as my brain needs time to learn to interpret the different type of signals it now receives from the electrodes implanted in my cochlear.
I will have a series of follow up appointments during May and through the summer as they tweak the settings, as my brain learns and adapts to this new way of hearing. After a number of months I will be allowed to resume wearing my right hearing aid, once my brain has learned how to hear through the CI device.
So it's going to be long journey. Tomorrow's operation is just the first step, and in some ways is the easiest, as I don't have to physically do much, myself. It's on the 1st May that the real challenge starts for me. No one would give me exact timescales for this stage, although I would hope that at the very least, by the end of 2019 (if not before) I will be confident in my hearing, and by this time next year I'll be hearing better than I've ever heard before. That's the hope - time will tell.
Tonight I'll head to London with my Mum, to stay overnight in an Airbnb. Tomorrow we have to be at the hospital at 7.30am, me with an empty stomach. I don't do well without breakfast, fortunately the Airbnb is just 5 minutes walk from the hospital, so hopefully Mum won't have to deal with me collapsing on her halfway!
The operation to implant my left cochlear should take place in the morning, typically 1.5-2 hours, but I'm told it can take longer if access to the cochlear is tricky (they have to squeeze past the facial nerve and the auditory nerve to get there), so it all depends on the exact positioning of these nerves in my head. All being well, I should be discharged the same day, as this is a straightforward outpatient procedure that the surgeon carries out every week.
I'm told it's 1-2 weeks to get back to 100% after the operation, but it varies a lot. During this time, I will have just one hearing aid on, in my right ear. 6 months ago I'd have hated the idea of this. But last autumn I had a series of ear infections in my left ear, so I could only wear my right aid for several weeks. And actually, it was OK. I'm glad I had those infections now, so the prospect of living with just one hearing aid in is no longer nearly as daunting!
6 weeks later (on the 1st May) I will go back to the hospital for the "switch-on" appointment. At this point I have to stop wearing my right hearing aid, and only wear the CI device on my left ear. This is the scary and difficult bit. This is when I find out if the surgery was successful, and I find out how much I can hear. I'm told that, to start with, it can range from hearing lots of sounds, although with distortion (so peoples' voices will sound like Donald Duck) to hearing very little, just clicks and beeps, as my brain needs time to learn to interpret the different type of signals it now receives from the electrodes implanted in my cochlear.
I will have a series of follow up appointments during May and through the summer as they tweak the settings, as my brain learns and adapts to this new way of hearing. After a number of months I will be allowed to resume wearing my right hearing aid, once my brain has learned how to hear through the CI device.
So it's going to be long journey. Tomorrow's operation is just the first step, and in some ways is the easiest, as I don't have to physically do much, myself. It's on the 1st May that the real challenge starts for me. No one would give me exact timescales for this stage, although I would hope that at the very least, by the end of 2019 (if not before) I will be confident in my hearing, and by this time next year I'll be hearing better than I've ever heard before. That's the hope - time will tell.
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