A Visit To See Sue

Saturday 6th October

My family (husband, two boys) went to meet Sue whom had a Cochlear Implant two years ago. It was my husband's idea to meet her and see what really had happened when she had the implant in and afterwards. And it was also a chance for the boys to see where the implant, speech processor was and the colours of the speech processor.

The boys were really amazed to see the size of it and where it was and laughed at the different colours as I know their favourite colour is red for Manchester Utd!! No way would I wear red but Sue said she wears it when she has different tops on! Now that's an idea there!

Howie asked her a couple of questions and Sue really gave us a lot of feedback and was very helpful. That really gave us confidence and know what to expect afterwards.

We also asked a few questions to Sue's children and they really helped us by answering the questions then they soon forgotten about us and started to play games with our boys and got on really well.

It was a good night to see her, especially..... that Sue was in my class at Odsal House School for the Deaf from 1970 onwards and I had left Odsal House in 1977 to Heaton Middle! Odsal House closed in 1977 and got transferred to a new school called Thorn Park at that time, I occasionally saw her when I was at Heaton Middle and Belle Vue. After 1984 I never saw Sue much and forgotten till we were in Belgium when I spotted an article in the Daily Express all about her Cochlear Implant!

And she appeared on the local news as well and I contacted the TV company and we got in touch again in 2005 till my computer crashed and lost most of the email addresses! Once I heard that I was being referred to have the CI, I "googled" her name as I knew there would be some articles about her and finally got in touch with her again and have promised not to loose email addresses again! I did see Sue in July when we both went to Thorn Park School Reunion as it recently celebrated 30 years... was it really 30 years since I left Odsal House?

Now I've had the pneumococcal immunisation and I was feeling under the weather for 48 hours and am ready for next week's operation.

I will be admitting at Bradford Royal on 17th October in the evening in preparation for the operation to take place the following morning.

Thank you for reading this and will be back soon.