Final appointment at Emmeline Centre

10th July 2008: I had my final appointment today to fill out a questionnaire based on my current hearing levels and what I expect from having a cochlear implant. Then they did another baseline test of my hearing using the “screen test”. This is a man on a tv screen with a blue background and he says sentences which you have to lip-read and repeat back to the audiologist/ speech therapist what you heard/lip-read. They do this test with no sound and lip-reading, then with one ear listening and lip-reading, then the other ear, then both and finally I did some listening of sentences coming out of speakers. They found that my lip-reading is excellent and that I did even better when I had sound to back up what I was seeing. They also said I am making excellent use of my language and visual skills to help put together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is sound. My right ear tended to be better at listening independently than my left but both ears together was better than one. I was able to pick up single words, perhaps two in a sentence. I was usually able to tell the intonation of a word or sentence but would not have enough information from listening alone to know what a sentence contained.