A bit more history

In my late 40's, I found that I was becoming increasingly reliant on lip-reading. I could no longer understand radio. TV shows and movies were becoming impossible to understand unless they had 'talking heads' or captions. And in the past year, I've had to stop using the telephone for anything but brief and predictable conversations with people I know.

When I realized that I could no longer hear high-pitched sounds such as birds, smoke alarms and the 'beep' of the microwave telling me the porridge was done ... it was time for action!

My audiologist at The Toronto Hospital re-tested my hearing and found that it had taken a measurable dive when compared to previous tests. I was now at 110db (left ear) and 115db (right ear) for 2000Hz which is around the critical frequency for a lot of consonant sounds ("ch", "sh"). Other frequencies were not much better. That meant I was considered to be profoundly deaf.

The end result was a referral to the Cochlear Implant centre at Sunnybrook Hospital. There was a bit of a wait for the initial appointment but after that everything seemed to happen quite quickly. Those horror stories you sometimes read about ridiculously long waits under the Ontario Health Care system don't seem to have affected our family.

The first appointment was with an specialized audiologist. She put me through a number of tests, some of which were new to me and some that were more detailed versions of the initial hearing test at TTH. At the end of it, she confirmed that my hearing level was within their guidelines for cochlear implant candidacy. She also explained that it was likely I would do well with an implant because my speech was fairly normal and I had lived in the 'hearing world' for all my life with the assistance of hearing aids - i.e. I had not been through a long period of sound deprivation. But she warned me that the surgery, if it happened, would just be a starting point and that it would likely take a lot of time and effort to become fully effective with the device.

More tests followed at later appointments including a CT scan, a balance test and an interview with the surgeon. The tests evidently showed no abnormalities that would preclude a cochlear implant. Dr Chen explained the surgical process in detail and what we could expect afterwards. He also said that, while it was possible for some residual hearing to be retained, the likelihood was that much or all of it would be destroyed during the implantation process. A one way trip, if you like.

After he left to see another patient, we realized that we had not talked about which ear would be implanted! Someone fetched the Dr again and he said that it likely made little difference in the end since both ears were similar in degree of hearing loss. My preference was to have the right ear implanted since my left ear seems to have slightly more functional hearing and thus a bit less to lose.

Having had some time to think about this during the initial wait for the appointment, my mind was already made up. There seemed to be little to lose and, possibly, a lot to gain. After a brief consultation with Barb, we booked a date (2009-01-15) and signed the consent form.