ALL WAS NOT AS EXPECTED

 “I'm the only one in my family who is deaf, and there are still conversations that go around me that I miss out on. And I ask what's going on, and I have to ask to be included. But I'm not going to be sad about it. I don't live in sad isolation. It's just a situation I'm used to.”  

~  Marlee Matlin  ~

I had done my home-work and chose the implant and processor that I thought would best suit my needs from the selection of three they gave me. I attended my appointment to find out the verdict.

To this day I do not know what effect that storm had on my results. No one is saying.

The verdict was that they thought I should have a stapedectomy operation not a cochlear implant. The reasoning was that this was a more minor procedure (in comparison) and if it worked it would prove my auditory nerve was functioning. This was the very same operation I had been told for thirty years would not give me any serious benefit. The difference now was that I had no hearing in that ear at all, so there was nothing to lose and a lot to gain, possibly.

I couldn’t disagree with the reasoning. I was used to this sort or argument with patients when you know nothing is certain in surgery. There is no going back and doing it again in the same way if it doesn’t work or complications have set in. It is important to have faith in the specialist you are consulting. They will always have more knowledge than the patient. Most importantly they see the incidence of problems and learn from their experience. It develops into knowing of when NOT to do surgery as much as when it is the best solution. I didn’t want to become an experienced patient!

I left a little disappointed but at least he was going to help me with something and I was desperate. After a four month wait, on the warmest day of that year so far I went into the hospital for my Day Surgery. I came out of a different hospital four days later! But that is another story. My ear was fine, the rest of me had folded up and it took five months to return to work.

The consent form is seen as a mere formality to most people, to doctors and patients alike. It has no real use until something happens, which is fortunately rare. Nowadays it includes written acknowledgement of the common things that may go wrong, enough to frighten off some people but ignored by most. I have seen this mentioned with a wave of the hand as if it is just bureaucracy. A one in a thousand complication is not much unless you are that one. Then who cares about the other nine hundred and ninety nine fortunate souls? If the surgery doesn’t get you the anaesthetic might and then there are always the undiagnosed things you didn’t know you had. In my case I had a raised blood pressure that I could not blame on just having been given some unsettling news. At least by being treated for it now I probably have been saved some other troubles in the future.

For a year after the surgery progress was good. I now had hearing in both ears again. The difficulty that had not been removed was my distance hearing. I was fine up to four feet away. Able up to eight feet on a good day but beyond that was a mystery. It was not that I heard nothing. I was, and always had been aware of sounds to some degree, but I could not define speech unless close up in quiet surroundings. To add to my ability I started formal lip reading classes. I knew that I did it automatically, the tests had shown that and so I knew its worth. I thought if I could be even better at it I might improve on the distance. Sign language (BSL) seemed too complicated and no one in my circle used it anyway

At work, I could ‘hear’ someone giving me instructions through a glass door from thirty feet away (which is more than others could do) but not the person standing beside me. Wearing surgical masks destroys any attempt at understanding lips or any kind of expression. I could however, see their eyes and this is a window into a person’s soul! I got very good at reading non-verbal communications. Assessing moods and knowing who to keep away from made for a more comfortable day. I could tell I was wrong by the look on their face but when I was right nothing showed. If nothing was said to me I had had a good day!

My friends were developing their own version of sign language and at times stopped talking to me altogether. Not a slight, just a realisation of the situation, it saved repartition and delay. I could do my job in familiar places but it was when working with people I did not know that I floundered. I needed to keep to my routine and so became more insular.

I have worked with people from all over the world at some time or other in my career, but now accents were becoming a serious problem, even those of people I knew well. Also speech seemed to be too fast for me or sentences too long and tiring. I had to consciously set things up to speak to people or not bother at all. I had to carry a notebook so they could write things down for me.

My surgery had given me back a full width of hearing frequencies, including some I had not used for a long time, but I still wanted, needed even, some more distance.

I became good at identifying the problems out there but could not do anything about them.