We took the eardrops for about a month or two but it wasn’t clearing up. That’s when I started to get worried, as I didn’t want another operation.

We went back to the hospital and explained to Mr Raine what we had been doing with my ear and he had a look. He confirmed that I had an infection and that he wanted to perform an operation to see what was causing it. I wanted to go home but we had to stay the hospital because he wanted to carry out the operation as soon as possible. So we went to the waiting room and phoned my dad who’d just come home from work, we told him to bring some bits and bobs like toothbrush, clothes, jammies and other stuff.

A month after the operation we went back to the hospital as routine. When Mr Raine looked into my ear he told my mum that the infection was still there and he wanted to take another look under anesthetic so we agreed to another operation.

Mr Raine found that the cochlear inside my ear was getting inflamed, so he had to bring my mum into a room beside the operating theatre where he asked if he could have permission to take the cochlear implant out of my ear.

When I woke up I wanted mum to put my cochlear on but she said that Mr Raine had to take it out because of the infection. I felt angry because I’d loved being able to hear, but he took it away from me and I hated it. My mum wrote down on a notepad that when I get better he might be able to put a better cochlear implant in my left ear, and that it’d be much better then the one I had in my right as it was more modern, so I went along with it.

I was in hospital for a couple of days after that and then they sent me home to get some rest. Mum said I could have a few more days off school which I wasn’t pleased about as I get bored at home with nothing to do but stay in bed and rest.

After I recovered from the operation I went back to school and carried on as if nothing had happened, but nothing was the same because I was again in the silent world.

I went back to the hospital and saw Mr Raine again. He put a wick in my right ear and we hoped that the infection would go away.

After a couple of months he arranged for me to have the modern cochlear implant in my left ear and I agreed to it because all I wanted was to hear again and make the infection go away.

At Christmas 1999 we had an appointment to go for the operation, so we signed into hospital and I remembered some of the nurses because I had seen them in the other times I’d been in for operations.

I was in a different room this time, it wasn’t a private room, it was one with four beds, so other people were in there too.

It was the same old routine, I’d play in the games room, then a nurse would come and put the numbing cream on my hand, then I would go to theatre.

I woke up in a private room which was not what I’d expected; I thought I was going to be in the same one that I was assigned to.

As it was a few days before Christmas day, I wanted to go to the Christmas party that we have every year at home, so they invited me to a party at the hospital on ward 16. I loved it because they said I could go home the day after the party, so two parties in one Christmas. They weren’t sure whether to let me go home or not, so they phoned Meltham Road Surgery to make sure a nurse would check on me at home every week.

The next time I saw Mr Raine was when I went back to see him in the hospital for a check-up to see if my ear was healing well. The one thing I was glad about the modern cochlear was that they would not have to take the stitches out, as they were dissolvable. I was glad for that because I hated having stitches out.

A few days after I saw Mr Raine, I had an appointment to go to the cochlear implant service to get my new implant. It was more modern than the one before and I could still hear well.

Since that day I have the “behind the ear” cochlear implant, which I found was easier to use than the others because all the old box ones had leads. This is a simple behind the ear one that no-one can see and suits me just fine.

I still have the infection in my right ear and am still receiving treatment for it, but nothing seems to work, so all we can do is control the infection. I am coming on 15 years-old and since I was nine I wanted for that time to hear again and to get rid of the infection. What I have done is accomplished my hearing but not got rid of my infection.

For my future, I hope I can get rid of my infection and carry on hearing as I can now and just hope that my left ear doesn’t do the same as my right ear had done. If that happens, I can’t get another cochlear implant, so I hope to be doing as well as I am doing now, which is hoping to go on and pass my GCSEs and go to college and keep on hearing with my cochlear implant, which I wouldn’t be without, ever.

If I ever get my infection in my left ear as I have in my right ear, I hope Mr Raine and other doctors have all the power to get me hearing again and to have another cochlear implant as I wish to have and do not wish to be without.

To be continued...