My speech for the '2000th Cochlear Implant Celebration'

For the family and friends who wanted to know what my speech was. And for anybody at the event who couldn't hear it properly. Here it is ...

Hi everyone! I'm Daniela. And only five months ago, I was a completely different person. I’d lost my sense of identity. Lost my place in this world. At a social event like this, I’d be hiding in the corner somewhere, silently hoping that nobody would approach me. I’d look at the floor, never meet anybody’s eyes in case it sparked a conversation. If I had to take part in a discussion, I’d mimic the face expressions of the other people in the group and hope it was the right reaction to whatever was being said. I could never make new friends. It took all my energy to simply keep my current friends. To be honest, I would have been too afraid to come to an event like this in the first place. I doubt you’d have met me at all, five months ago.

But there were some very special people here who did meet me back then. After three years of alternating between the ground floor emergency department, the level two audiology department and the various ENT’s offices on level 5, I proudly announced to my family that I’d finally made it closer to the top. Level 6, the cochlear implant clinic, where I had my first appointment with an audiologist named Liz Winton, who had to repeat her name about five times for me to understand what it was. And only weeks later, I’d even made it to level 8 for an appointment with my surgeon, Dr Briggs, who had to repeat himself about 19 times during that final sign-off appointment. I was a very difficult person to talk to back then, so I’m grateful for their patience and compassion.

I lost my hearing quite suddenly in 2007, at the age of 27. I’d been fighting an ear infection at the time. It turns out my immune system fought off the infection and then kept going. The autoimmune hearing loss was often able to be reversed or stabilised with medication, but every time I stopped the medication it would suddenly disappear again. When the medication caused some other serious health issues, I decided to stop taking it and just say good bye to my hearing instead.

Every time the dizziness would start, my world would spin … and when it stopped I'd be stranded somewhere a little quieter than before. Where everybody was speaking a foreign language. Where I felt like I was observing the world, but never living in it. I felt like the condition had not only destroyed my hearing, it had destroyed my sense of belonging: my home.   

In March 2010, I received two cochlear implants simultaneously. In April 2010, they were switched on.

Seeing the helium balloons here today makes me smile because it reminds me of that day. The day that everybody talking to me seemed to have swallowed a large dose of helium first! But I loved it. I could understand words again. I walked through the park near St Patrick’s Cathedral and listened to the birds in the trees, with a huge smile on my face. I couldn’t even wait to get home to test out the piano – I dragged my husband into the nearest music store so I could hear for myself. Afterwards, I said to him, ‘there was music in the store, wasn’t there? Coming from a speaker somewhere?’ He frowned and shook his head. I said, ‘but I heard it – it was a piano. Somebody was playing the most beautiful song.’ He then looked at me, horrified. ‘You can’t mean the pianos being tuned out the back?’ Yep, it turns out I did. We still laugh about that today.

With a little luck, quite a bit of sound rehabilitation, and a lot of optimism, the sounds started stabilising. And five months on, I’m living a very different life. I don’t hide in the corners of rooms anymore: I seek people out. I don’t look at the floor anymore: I make eye contact. I’m not afraid to pick up the phone when it rings. I can talk effortlessly with my family and friends again. Hear my husband tell me he loves me. (Even if I have to force it out of him sometimes!) I take piano lessons every Tuesday night. Fill the silences with my favourite songs again, if there’s nobody around to talk to. I’ve changed my wardrobe purely to match the processor covers that I swap around each day.

I’ve reasserted my place in this world with a vengeance, driving my family mad by repeating the things they say. Just because I can. Or taking such pleasure in sounds, any sounds, that I’ll go out of my way to create them. Even amplify them. I make my hiccups as loud as possible. And my teeth chatter as loudly as possible. I’ve been known to make our cuckoo clock chime when it’s not quite supposed to.  My friends describe me as a ‘listening junkie’. My husband describes me as a ‘noise machine’.

But they’re (mostly!) happy to be annoyed because my happiness is contagious. Because I remember too well what it's like to not to be able to do any of these things. I take nothing for granted now. I’m so grateful I can hear again, that I feel like I’m on top of the world every day.

So thank you, first to Professor Graeme Clark and Cochlear for this incredible invention. But also to Dr Briggs, Liz Winton and everybody here at the Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital who have helped make this happen for me, and for so many others. May you continue giving people the gift of hearing. May you continue making us feel like we're on top of the world. Thank you for helping me find my way home.