"The best thing ever!"

The CI group meeting was scheduled for 2pm today, I took a half day from work to attend, but forgot how bad the M50 was at lunch hour especially with the road works approaching the M1 that I didn't get there til 2:35pm! I arrived as Martin was almost finishing his story. I was so disappointed to have missed most of it but it couldn't be helped... Martin became deaf later in life and was 'very happy' with his implant, his only disappointment was music. He couldn't make any sense of it; was all 'garbled noises' to him. He urged us to go in with an open mind, to 'expect nothing' go with the flow and do not compare yourself to one else. His ‘biggest achievement’ was being able to hear on the phone again via the mobile bluetooth loop, to join a group of friends in the pub and not feel ‘left out’.

There were four other people present, going for a CI in the next few months; all males. Two were younger while the other two were older than me. One of the lads is currently in his leaving certificate year - what a stressful time to get implanted! Two were Irish Sign Language (ISL) users, like myself, and actively involved in the Irish Deaf community. We had an ISL Interpreter present for communication and the CI team took turns providing speedtext.

Fiona, the other CI-Implantee arrived shortly after me with a huge smile, brimming with confidence that made me warm to her. I like people who are positive, upbeat, chatty and assured. Jaclyn introduced Fiona as one of their 'successful implantees to date...' Fiona then launched into her story, telling us how she had a congenital mild loss that appeared when she was 9/10 years old and got progressively worse in her mid-teens; ended up profoundly deaf by the age of 19. From my work in DeafHear.ie, I am very aware of the negative impact post-linguist hearing loss has on people, especially Teenagers. This is the worse age to experience a hearing loss, you lose friends as you can’t keep up with the peer group, educational opportunities are hampered and family relationships are further strained with the angst-ridden-teen being isolated and left out more - leading to teenagers going totally off the rails. But Fiona seemed to have weathered this really well.

I got butterflies when Fiona mentioned that had her operation last November 2008, with switch on after Christmas, she was 9 months into the AR programme and "loving it!". Could this be me in a year's time?!

I was amazed as Fiona ran through an impressive list of what she 'can hear now' with the CI - down to the fact that she no longer had to look at people as she talked to them. As if to demonstrate Jaclyn asked her a question and she answered correctly without looking at Jaclyn. Amazing! More so was her 'new found love for music', which she was listening to via the T-links on her iPod.

The biggest measurement of change was obvious from her Word Recognition Scores - she went from a '<10%' pre-CI, to 27% one month post-switch on, to an amazing 84% 3 months post-switch on!

Like Martin, Fiona also warned us to 'expect nothing' in the first month - admitted that her 'switch on' was very disappointing, she 'hated' the sounds she was hearing in the first few weeks, it just wasn't 'normal' to what her brain remembered from her childhood but little by little she overcame the dislike to adjust to the new CI and become the person telling us today that couldn't imagine life without the CI "... it's the best thing ever!"

Hearing Fiona and Martin's CI experiences made me more optimistic about getting the CI. My only disappointed with the meeting was the fact that both CI experiences were non-ISL/Deaf community involved so some of my questions remain unanswered. Guess I just have to find more CI experiences myself and get the answers I seek.