Miss-Delectable
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http://www.harboroughtoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=760&ArticleID=1496794
For 43 years the Gibson Way telecoms engineer had managed without hearing in one ear, but when the hearing went in the other, he was plunged into terrifying silence and depression.
But now, thanks to a cochlea implant switched on recently, he can hear again.
Mr Williams (45), who has a wife, Carole, and son, Karl (19), described the moment: "When the woman turned the switch, my heart went boom, boom, boom.
"It was elation, euphoria. You could use any words and it would not come close to how I felt."
It was in January 2004, on an escalator in Coventry city centre, that Mr Williams suddenly completely lost his hearing and, despite months of tests, doctors never knew why.
He said: "The most depressing thing for me was that they never found a cause. I never got closure.
"It just happened without rhyme or reason."
He was told a cochlea implant was an option and an operation was eventually booked for March 2005.
But weeks before the operation, his ear became seriously infected and, instead of fitting the implant, the same surgeon had to remove the decaying material and rebuild his ear drum from a skin graft taken from his outer skull.
Finally, in January this year, the implant was fitted, connecting his cochlea nerve to a computer processor which is worn behind his ear. It was switched on last month.
Normally, the ear transmits analogue sounds into electrical impulses which the brain decodes, but with the computer processor
it is done digitally so what Mr Williams hears is a 'perception of sound' filled in by his memory.
He said: "Nothing sounds the same. People sound like Mickey Mouse on helium, or Stephen Hawking, who has an electric voice box.
"That's how everybody sounds to me because I've got an electric ear.
"But my brain remembers how things used to sound and my wife sounds like my wife."
Because he can't ignore background noise, he identifies every sound from individual dogs barking to petrol or diesel engines – and is amazed by how much 'hearing people' blank out.
He has just started listening to favourite band Queen again and can 'hear' a song when he remembers what it was.
The hardest thing now, is removing the hearing aid at night.
He said: "This gives me a chance to hear things but I know I'm deaf. To be reminded of it is still a shock. I chat to my wife for ages at night because I don't want to take it off."
And family life, said Mrs Williams, is happier by the day.
For 43 years the Gibson Way telecoms engineer had managed without hearing in one ear, but when the hearing went in the other, he was plunged into terrifying silence and depression.
But now, thanks to a cochlea implant switched on recently, he can hear again.
Mr Williams (45), who has a wife, Carole, and son, Karl (19), described the moment: "When the woman turned the switch, my heart went boom, boom, boom.
"It was elation, euphoria. You could use any words and it would not come close to how I felt."
It was in January 2004, on an escalator in Coventry city centre, that Mr Williams suddenly completely lost his hearing and, despite months of tests, doctors never knew why.
He said: "The most depressing thing for me was that they never found a cause. I never got closure.
"It just happened without rhyme or reason."
He was told a cochlea implant was an option and an operation was eventually booked for March 2005.
But weeks before the operation, his ear became seriously infected and, instead of fitting the implant, the same surgeon had to remove the decaying material and rebuild his ear drum from a skin graft taken from his outer skull.
Finally, in January this year, the implant was fitted, connecting his cochlea nerve to a computer processor which is worn behind his ear. It was switched on last month.
Normally, the ear transmits analogue sounds into electrical impulses which the brain decodes, but with the computer processor
it is done digitally so what Mr Williams hears is a 'perception of sound' filled in by his memory.
He said: "Nothing sounds the same. People sound like Mickey Mouse on helium, or Stephen Hawking, who has an electric voice box.
"That's how everybody sounds to me because I've got an electric ear.
"But my brain remembers how things used to sound and my wife sounds like my wife."
Because he can't ignore background noise, he identifies every sound from individual dogs barking to petrol or diesel engines – and is amazed by how much 'hearing people' blank out.
He has just started listening to favourite band Queen again and can 'hear' a song when he remembers what it was.
The hardest thing now, is removing the hearing aid at night.
He said: "This gives me a chance to hear things but I know I'm deaf. To be reminded of it is still a shock. I chat to my wife for ages at night because I don't want to take it off."
And family life, said Mrs Williams, is happier by the day.