After 22 years in silence, Philip Quearney decided to get a cochlear implant to allow him to hear again. Four months later his quality of life has improved dramatically. Hélène Hofmanreports
Philip Quearney was 17 when he lost his hearing in 1984. He had been using a hearing aid since birth, but at 14 he started having difficulties.
"I woke up one morning and I couldn't hear myself with the hearing aid. Up until that point I had no problems," said Quearney, a roofer who lives in Whitehall in Dublin.
"I was worried, but after about five or six days it came back to normal. This happened a few times over the next two years.
"When I was 17 it went and I thought: 'Grand, it'll come back in a few days.' I was waking up every morning hoping I'd hear something, but I never did."
Just over two and a half years ago Quearney decided to get a cochlear implant - a small device surgically implanted into the ear that can provide a sense of sound. He attended counselling groups and passed a number of hearing tests, and an MRI scan to ensure the implant could be fitted.
In June, aged 39, he underwent the two-hour surgery to fit the electrode at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin. Two months later in August the implant was switched on. Beaumont is the State's only hospital that fits cochlear implants.
The cochlear implant department was set up in 1995 and has 14 staff including ear, nose and throat surgeons, psychologists and speech and language therapists. In all, 288 people, of whom about two-thirds are children, have undergone implant surgery there to date.
"The implant is the last resort for many patients," said Gary Norman, principal audiological scientist and head of the department at Beaumont.
"We look for people who have a profound hearing loss on both sides and make sure they're not getting any significant benefit from the most powerful, up-to-date hearing aids.
"Generally with hearing loss you've lost the sensory nerve endings but everything else is working exactly the same," said Norman.
The implant does not restore normal hearing but gives a useful representation of sounds and can help understand speech.
An electrode, about the size of a two-euro coin, is surgically implanted into the cochlea just behind the ear. An external headset is then placed onto the ear and connects to the internal part by magnet.
The headset contains a microphone, which picks up sound, transmits it to a speech processor and sends it by radio frequency into the implant or electrode.
"You have to be careful to implant the right candidates," said Norman. "If someone has signed all their lives and they don't have memory of sounds then it won't help."
Having been able to hear for the first 17 years of his life, Quearney was at an advantage, which is why just four months later he can use the telephone with the help of a neck loop to pick up the sound.
"For a good few weeks [after the surgery] the brain is waking up very slowly," he said. "I'm getting used to it now and my friends also say my speech has improved and I'm much clearer now."
Quearney goes to Beaumont hospital every couple of weeks to be assessed by his speech rehabilitationist and have the implant tuned. Eventually these visits will be reduced to yearly check-ups.
"The best part was being able to talk to my mother again on the phone. When I first got the neck loop, I realised it was going to take time to get used to it.
"So I was ringing loads of people but decided not to ring my mum until I was really sure. When I rang her she was amazed. She said: 'I can't believe I'm talking to you on the phone after 22 years.' "It was very emotional, you know what mothers are like," he said.