How Laurie suddenly found world of sound

Even his family struggled to communicate with him which meant he became more and more isolated. Christmas was a particularly hard time as Laurie would spend it in a room by himself with the dog.

Now, however, the 74-year-old from Hull is a changed person. He chatters away about the procedure which has changed his and his family’s life forever.

Eighteen months ago Laurie had a cochlear implant at Bradford Royal Infirmary’s Listening for Life Centre.

“I was gobsmacked when they switched it on. I could hear for the first time in years. I couldn’t believe all the noise, especially on the bus on the way home.”

Laurie’s hearing was damaged in an accident when he was 16 years old when he fell off a ladder. But it wasn’t until he tried to sign up for National Service that he was told his hearing was too bad to enlist.

Laurie tried conventional NHS hearing aids but in those days they were large and cumbersome.

“They had wires everywhere and it really got in the way of my job,” says Laurie a retired electrician and plumber.

As his hearing deteriorated further his wife, Kath, started to take over most of the communicating for both of them.

“She did all the talking. It was really hard on holiday when she was talking to people and making friends and I just couldn’t.”

Work became increasingly hard so Laurie went into business for himself with Kath answering the phones and doing the talking.

“No one would work with him,” says Kath, “because they couldn’t talk to him.”

Anything important Kath had to write down and so it went on for years.

Then one day while Laurie was doing some work for his daughter at her garden centre, a customer told her about her husband whose life had been transformed by a cochlear implant.

“I had never heard of them,” says Laurie. “I had been to the doctor’s and the hospital but no-one ever said there was anything that could be done.”

He went to see Chris Raine, ENT consultant at the Bradford Royal Infirmary which houses the regional centre of excellence for cochlear implants.

And just before Christmas 2009 Laurie had the cochlear implant fitted to his right ear.

Cochlear implant systems convert everyday sounds into coded electrical impulses. These electrical pulses stimulate the auditory (hearing) nerve and the brain interprets them as sound.

“People with a cochlear implant don’t hear as we do,” explains Mr Raine. “They have to learn to understand the sounds they hear.”

Only people with profound hearing loss are eligible for a cochlear implant and about 1,200 are carried out nationally, some on babies as young as six months. The oldest recipient at Bradford was 86.

Laurie had counselling from speech and language therapist Lynne Tapper to warn him what to expect.

“I had to write everything down for Laurie as he couldn’t hear anything,” says Lynne.

But that was soon to change. A month after having the surgery Laurie’s implant was turned on.

“I could hear straight away. You do have to work to interpret some of the sounds but it is incredible. I could hear the snow crunch as I walked and Christmas was transformed. I can now have proper conversations with my son. I wish I had known about it years ago, but better late than never.”