Hear Again

Ivan Carabott is 33 years old and lost his hearing 20 years ago. He has set up a blog called Hear Again to keep track of his progress 'towards obtaining a cochlear implant'. In this entry he describes his 'first step towards the implant:

Today I took my first, tottering, hopeful step towards obtaining an implant. I went to St. Luke's Hospital in G'Mangia and had a CT Scan. Basically, I went to St. Luke's with Mandy (and parked inside for 30c yipee no circling for ages anymore!), went to the X-Ray area, sat down for maybe 2 minutes -and to my utter amazement I was called in immediately.

I went in with a little trepidation - I'd had a CT scan 20 years ago when I first went to hospital when I lost my hearing. The process took something like 30 minutes, I froze half way to death - and since I'm deaf it was a bit of a sensory deprivation thing with my eyes closed, not hearing a thing and not being able to move. To cap it all, I was injected with a special radioactive dye to make my brain show up a little clearer (am I that brainless?!) Anyway, a very friendly nurse sat me down, braced my head so I wouldn't move - and the whole process took 30 seconds. Wow, talk about advances in technology...

Ivan's first entry