When adding friends to Facebook yesterday it suddenly dawned on me that it will be ten years in 2009 since I received my first cochlear implant. It so happens also that the first person I added to my friends list on Facebook was Rosi Adendorff who was THE person to get me started on the journey back to the hearing world now about ten years ago.
Apart from Rosi it may not be mere co-incidence that some of the other first friends that I added to Facebook were also with me ten years ago - Patsi Schuhmann, Linda De Bloom Stock, Marilyn Moore Harris and Stuart McNaughton. Of course many others followed and I am as indebted to them for years of wonderful friendships than I am to these first few people who set me off on the road back to hearing... The story will follow as I revive memories from the earlier days and add new ones as I continue...
15 Janauary 1999 marks a turning point in my life... On that day my late husband Hennie had to have surgery to remove a cancerous lymph node from his neck. The surgeon warned us beforehand that he may not be able to speak after this operation.
To understand the impact of this message on my life you have to realise that I was almost completely deaf at that stage and Hennie was my "ears". I relied heavily on him to communicate on my behalf. If he could not talk I would not be able to communicate with him apart from lip reading...
I will never forget the emotions that hit me when I tried to talk to him after the surgery and could not hear him at all! He COULD NOT SPEAK CLEARLY! The lymph node had been removed but in the process the nerve to his vocal cords was also removed... This was the start of a very very sad and traumatic year in my life...
Ten years later I sit here this morning listening to my partner Kalie talking on the phone and I do not even have to look at him to hear what he is saying...I have my wonderful bilateral implants that restored my earing to almost normal levels. I am just so grateful for the ability to hear again and more so to be able to talk to friends and family without much trouble and hardly any requests for repeats.
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