I had some time off to recover. On some days, I would go for a walk to get some fresh air. There were times when I felt my balance was off-kilter or I was feeling light-headed. During my walks, I sometimes had to sit down for a few minutes for my lightheadedness to pass. The surgery on my ear had affected my balance, only for a short time.

A few weeks had gone past. It was time for activation. I went back to the same hospital where they have a dedicated unit for patients with cochlear implants. They would sync an external processor with the implant embedded next to my earlobe.

The external processor is similar to a hearing aid except it comes with a magnet. This would be attached to the implant under my skin. Depending on the thickness of your hair, you can get different magnet strengths. As I have short hair, my magnet strength was 2. Later, I would find that in the first few months, the magnet would irritate my skin. It was very itchy. This soon subsided.

I was in a small office waiting to get my cochlear activated. Gerard was with me for support. When it was switched on, I could hear sounds but it was muffled. I was unable to hear Gerard and the audiologist. I relied on my lipreading to understand what was happening. I was panicking a bit because I thought it wasn’t working. I had to remind myself to be patient and that it can take a long time to hear. I had to go through a battery of hearing tests.

Hearing tests are very important to check if the cochlear implant was working for me. My cochlear implant was hooked to a machine operated by the audiologist. They can play different sounds at different volume and pitch. I had to push a button to confirm that I heard the sound. I was already familiar with this.

However, I was taken to a different room where I had to face a small TV surrounded by small speakers on stands. They told me there would be a set of hearing tests. One with video and one with audio only, no video. They played a video of a man who was speaking through gritted teeth; it felt unnatural. My lip-reading skills didn’t help me here, either. I couldn’t make out a word. In the next test, they would play a few audio clips with no video. I couldn’t make out what was being said. That left me frustrated.

After my appointment, I went back home to reflect upon my experience. I still couldn’t hear anything with clarity. I felt a bit frustrated and thought I made a mistake. I was close to tears, because I was worried about my future. If it didn’t work out, what was I going to do?