Support and awareness for cochlear implant recipients
Mischelle Edmunds with Tom McCaul, a volunteer with the Cochlear Awareness Network, at the Better Hearing Australia national conference in Maryborough on the weekend. | Jodie van de Wetering
Broadcast by ABC Radio Wide Bay Qld - Wednesday, October 10, 2007. 12:15pm AEST
By Jodie van de Wetering
Tom McCaul was born deaf, and credits his cochlear implant with changing his life. He's now a volunteer with the Cochlear Awareness Network, a voluntary group providing support for implant recipients and those thinking of getting an implant and education for the wider community.
Dr McCaul was in Maryborough on the weekend, representing the network at Better Hearing Australia's national conference.
"Once I had my implant, I felt obliged to become part of the network," Tom explained, "Because it really has improved by lifestyle. It improved my self esteem, I became more confident and work-wise, I was able to talk with hearing people. Before, I had enormous trouble. This implant has given me a new lease of life and I felt obliged to give back, to help people in a similar situation."
Tom said he was born with between severe and profound deafness, but he used to be able to hear with hearing aids.
"Then suddenly, out of the blue, I lost all hearing," he recalled. "Just in one hour, over coffee with a friend. Initially I thought it was just the hearing aid battery. I changed it three times, and suddenly I realised I had no hearing.
"I was in a panic, in shock. It was a grieving process. I was so reliant on sound; environmental sound like birds singing, leaves rustling, feet moving across a carpet, I couldn't hear any of that."
Dr McCaul had a friend who was already part of the Cochlear Awareness Network, and on his friend's advice he decided to get an implant himself.
"Once I had the implant, I realised I could hear a lot more than I used to hear. I was shaving one morning, and I noticed the noise of the blade rubbing against my skin. I'd never heard that scraping noise before."
Tom said the new noises he was able to hear through the implant were overwhelming at first, but he'd been warned what to expect by other implant recipients. He said, coming after the total loss of his hearing, the implant enabled him to hear sounds he never expected to hear again.
"When I had that hearing loss, I wanted to watch Muriel's Wedding that night, because it had all those ABBA songs. I wanted to have it captioned, but at that stage it wasn't available on DVD with captions, so I was relying on teletext. And that night, with this hearing loss, I didn't hear anything. I was so disappointed.
"But three weeks ago, I bought the DVD. I was watching it in tears, because I never expected to hear ABBA songs again."