a very important date

I type this on a rather q***t (DON'T SAY THE Q WORD!) twilight shift on ECU - unheard of, especially right before the Easter weekend....let's hope it continues for the rest of the Bank Holiday; while most of us get on with eating our chocolate eggs, other less fortunate lackeys of the NHS will have to spend the weekend battling the rising tide of patients. (Actually so will I on Easter Monday, after inhaling my egg. Good way to burn off the calories at least.)

So I have been given a date for my cochlear implant surgery - Tuesday 5th May! EEEEEEEEEEEEK! I'm not quite sure how I feel about this yet - I try not to focus too much on the actual surgery itself (though I bloody well hope my surgeon does) as it's a small hurdle on the way to better hearing. I'm fortunate as well in that one of my friends is also going through the process - she has had her bilateral implants already, a couple of weeks ago. It's oddly comforting to think that I have a companion in all this, a couple of steps ahead of me. I'm really looking forward to meeting up with her and seeing how she is getting on. Her switch on will be a good month or so before mine, so it will be handy to have a first hand account of what it's like for someone with similar hearing to me. 
UPDATE: I should point out I am only having one implant - currently to get 2 on the NHS you have to be a child or visually impaired as well. 

I'm not sure how I am going to deal with all this psychologically. We went skiing in Tignes last week - my first proper winter holiday - and I made the mistake of not booking lessons in advance, so I had to spend the first day wildly out of my comfort zone, on terrifying chairlifts and falling painfully down dozens of vertiginous blue runs. By the end of the day my stoicism had run out, and after skidding down Melezes for the gazillionth time I became rather pathetically whimpery. David had to carry my skis and let me hobble down to the nearest village, where we stumped up for a very expensive taxi to take us the tiny remaining distance to our chalet. I became a small miserable black hole of negativity for a couple of hours, moaning on about how I wanted to get the flight home tomorrow and I couldn't possibly do this and I was doomed to break some bone or other if I continued. (I'm not sure how David put up with this without strangling me but to his credit he did very well.)

I then had a shower, nap, 3 course meal and lots of wine. All this and a good round of Bananagrams restored my equanimity. The next day after 1 private lesson I was all smiles and "I CAN DO THIS" "I WILL OWN YOU MOUNTAIN". The rest of the week went by in a blur of not-falling-over and making it down several blue runs that had seemed impossible at the beginning. Now I can't wait to go back!!

The point of all that waffle - apart from making you jealous of my snowy holiday- is to explain one of my character faults: I can get really negative about things really quickly, often with a common-sense failure at the same time. However I normally manage to get back on an even keel after some food. Moral of the story - take biscuits to switch-on. And remember that things are always better after a good sleep! I like to think of myself as a fairly optimistic person on the whole, with occasional flip outs normally remedied by a hug or food. Or flowers. So hopefully I will be fine when switch on happens and I have all these weird new noises to get used to.

In other news, I have picked my implant model - I went for Cochlear, ultimately because I liked the look of it better (it's smaller) and the gimmick of automatic noise control (where the implant switches programmes for you automatically) sounds pretty canny man. I also got to pick the extras - so I went for waterproof casing so I can go swim underwater (OMFGIZZLE) and 2 spare batteries.

Here are some pictures of me trying the implant processors on. Excuse my massive pointy chin. 

Cochlear Nucleus (black - obv I will get a neutral looking one)

the vast array of colours available with Cochlear

Advanced Bionics - veritable rainbow of colours. To be honest, having a brightly coloured hearing aid has never really appealed to me - boring I know - so this didn't really factor in my decision

Advanced Bionics (in white) - I felt this was a bit too large

I have also had to go to a fairly pointless occupational health meeting (from my point of view anyway) where we established that I was indeed to have a cochlear implant and yes I would require time off work, but we don't know exactly how much yet. I wait with bated breath to see what happens next.

Next appointment on the cards is a consent appointment with the surgeon next week, and also an appointment at the GPs to get my pneumococcal vaccine (for meningitis prevention, as there is a small but significant increased risk of meningitis after surgery so near your brain.)

Driving home for Easter now (or rather, supervising David) so I will sign off and cuddle Rhubarb!