Lise - the head of the Manchester Children’s programme - is used to being impressed with Lily but I could tell when we discussed the results of the tests that Lise was seriously amazed – Lily had performed much better than Lise could have hoped. Lise said she was going to show the surgeon the results the next day and that what Lily had achieved so far would impact on other children in terms of still being implanted after a long period of no stimulation in a ‘dead ear’.

We don’t restrict listening work to single words any more. We use her new implant on its own for normal everyday listening situations. She is so good in context now that sometimes she will not even look round to try to lip read and just carry on with what she is doing and respond to me naturally.

We went to visit an old friend of Lily’s; a girl who was 5 years old when they first met and is now 15. This girl has only one implant and Lily was advising her that she would hear better if she had the second implant. And not to worry about the operation as it wasn’t too sore and the nurses were really nice.