And so it begins...

Overview:

I am profoundly deaf and have been since I was born a very long time ago...ok, 25 years ago. My losses are measured in decibels - that means, my nerves/brain perceive a tone (hertz) only when it is loud enough... in my right ear that means I have a loss of 85db, in my left it is 102db. My left ear has the worse low frequency sound perception but marginally better high frequency perception (conversational tones) - my right is the opposite - better low, rubbisher high.

I was meant to have a cochlear implant as a baby but because I had hydracephalus (and an abnormally large head) my parents decided against me undergoing more surgery as allegedly, being dysfunctional and requiring loads of interventions near enough finished my parents off, oh and me!

My most vivid memories of my childhood involve being in constant contact with a woman called Natasha who was responsible for training me to speak through constant, relentless, soul-destroying at times and plain exhausting speech therapy. Bless her, I still can't say words with the phoneme 'z' in them, but hey 43 out of 44 ain't bad!

Anyway - so, I grew up reliant on my NHS issue hearing aids and those ugly radio-aid systems that were literal strait jackets throughout my formative years. Fast forward to year 6 and I remember telling my lovely teaching assistant 'to flipping leave me alone' because I was so utterly fed up of having her follow my every move. My transition from year 6 to secondary school was... interesting. Once again I found myself alone amongst a sea of strangers, who having been to school with their friends had ready made cliques and strange friendship rules which made absolutely no sense to this rather serious and stubborn girl.

Secondary school was underwhelming and often frustrating, I had no confidence in myself and couldn't make friends easily - simply because I could not follow a conversation with more than two people at a time. The same occurred at college. I psyched myself up, reinvented myself, tried to be what I thought was 'pretty' and 'cool' - and still didn't manage to integrate, my ongoing swottiness and rather strict up bringing didn't help matters either.

My life changed, well... it began at Reading University, the Abi you know today was born the moment I met one of the greatest people I shall ever know. I met a girl on my first evening at University in Whiteknights JCR, which at the time was packed to the rafters with drunken freshers. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had been seen, she didn't give a fig that my first comment to her was 'god, it's noisy in here.' (I know, how deeply nerdy is that?) Sian Wood showed me a way to socialise and stretch myself through buckets of love and support during those three years at Reading. Without having met her, then Steve and Cerys and all the people interlinked within our network - I doubt my path would have crossed with Peter's, who I met as Sian's plus one at a house party.

Whoops - I have written rather a bit more than I thought...

Fast forward to now. I am an NQT, I have always wanted to work with children - simply because I enjoy the satisfaction that comes with it and the challenge of stretching those elastic minds. I decided, that since I had always been brought up to achieve the best, that I wasn't going to let my hearing stand in the way of a career that I wanted. But now, it is standing in the way - the effect this had had on my morale is pretty awful. I have noticed more and more, in different settings and situations how truly crap my hearing is. I've lost count of the number of times I have pestered my audiologists into fiddling with settings on my damned hearing aids - trying to find the elusive balance between clarity and volume necessary to enable me to thrive.

A BBC3 programme 'Deaf teens in a hearing world' had a huge impact on me - I watched as a profoundly deaf, yet fully verbose teenage underwent a CI operation and described how completely transformed her life was by it. I didn't think I was eligible, but I decided to visit my audiologists for a chat.

Last Wednesday, on February 16th, I was sat, prepared to be told 'they won't go any louder' or 'look, you'll never get what you want from this' or my favourite 'how many times have these settings been messed with'...I looked at this lovely lady, whose first comment was 'gosh, you look exhausted' - and promptly burst into tears. How embarrassing. I explained that once again I was unhappy with my hearing, that I was missing things out, that children were becoming impossible to understand without them raising their voices considerably. I explained how I couldn't fathom giving up a career that I had barely begun - simply because my stupid ears couldn't function. Her response stunned me. "If you feel like you're hitting a brick wall then perhaps it is time to consider a cochlear implant." No-one in all my years of living, had explained I might be a candidate. She set up an appointment with a hearing therapist for that Friday...

Friday morning at 8:15.. the hearing therapist looked at me so kindly I almost burst into tears again, at which he promptly jumped into action and frogmarched me into the testing booth whereupon I sat through a beep test which established my hearing was the same as ever, ie crap. He looked at me rather seriously, I looked at him.. he stroked his chin and then took me down the corridor to meet an ENT specialist. My audiogram changed hands, grave looks were exchanged and the ENT man turned to me...exhaled, stroked his chin and said 'Well, it's very bad. We shall get you referred right away.' Honestly, these two men must be frustrated action hero wannabes judging from the way they slammed into gear. Telephones were yanked up, emails fired, and all while I was standing rather akwardly in the corridor.. turns out I hadn't heard when they asked me to go back to the waiting room, mon dieu.

On March 9th I shall meet with the ENT man, we shall discuss CIs and then  I shall be referred to Manchester's Cochlear Implant Centre. It's all very dramatic!

So there we are - that's me!