Harborough man switched on at last
Phil Williams from Harborough had his cochlear implant switched on last month after two years of unexplained deafness.
Telecoms engineer Phil had already spent 43 years with single sided deafness, but when his hearing went in his 'good' ear, he was plunged into terrifying silence and depression. Phil remembers that moment clearly:
"It was in January 2004, on an escalator in Coventry city centre. The most depressing thing for me was that despite months of tests, the doctors never found a cause. It just happened without rhyme or reason."
Phil was told that a cochlear implant was an option and an operation was eventually booked for March 2005.
But weeks before the operation, his ear became seriously infected and, instead of fitting the implant, the same surgeon had to remove the decaying material and rebuild his ear drum from a skin graft taken from his outer skull.
Finally, in January this year, the implant was fitted, and Phil celebrated its switch on last month.
"When the woman turned the switch, my heart went boom, boom, boom. It was elation, euphoria. You could use any words and it would not come close to how I felt."
Normally, the ear transmits analogue sounds into electrical impulses which the brain decodes, but with the computer processor it is done digitally so what Phil hears is a 'perception of sound' filled in by his memory.
He says: "Nothing sounds quite the same - most people sound like Mickey Mouse on helium - but my brain remembers how some things used to sound and so my wife Carole sounds like my wife."
Because he can't ignore background noise, Phil identifies every sound from individual dogs barking to petrol or diesel engines – and is amazed by how much 'hearing people' blank out. He has just started listening to favourite band Queen again and can 'hear' a song when he remembers what it was.
The hardest thing now, is removing the hearing aid at night. Phil explains: "The implant gives me a chance to hear things but I know I'm deaf. To be reminded of it is still a shock. I chat to my wife for ages at night because I don't want to take it off."
