A few weeks ago, I linked to a post on William Mager’s blog in which he said (a) that he was about to have a cochlear implant fitted, and (b) that he’d write about the experience as it progressed.

I don’t know how many readers of this blog followed the link or subscribed; for those who didn’t, I thought I’d just point you in the direction of the latest update.  In short: the implant was fitted; it was turned on; it was… unexpected.  Not completely pleasant from the word go, and a little odd.  But also… well:

I spent an hour yesterday walking round the house tapping different surfaces with a wooden drumstick. Before, with a hearing aid, I’d have heard these taps simply as a ‘tap’ sound. But I had a eureka moment when I realised that tapping a wooden stick on a wooden surface sounded different in pitch and tone to tapping on a glass surface, or a metal surface. Of course, I knew that was the case – but this was the first time ever, EVER… that I’d actually heard that and been able to distinguish so clearly between the different sounds.

That has to be a little bit magical, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, what he can hear is limited.  And so

[n]ow I’m sitting in a world of silence, punctuated by random, violent bursts of sounds that I’ve never heard or experienced quite in the same way before.

What I’m experiencing now isn’t hearing as I imagined it, or as I’ve known it for the last 30 years. It’s completely different, and it’s making me feel really tired and disconnected from everything. I’m finding it really hard to concentrate, to hold on to a specific thought for a long time. […]

Most disconcerting of all is the dawning realisation that what I thought I was hearing for the last 30 years of my life wasn’t actually hearing. It was just compressed, distorted garbage noise through a hearing aid. What I’m feeling in my head now is much, much closer to actual sound, but it isn’t sound.

I’m fairly confident in my hunch that being able to hear is on the whole preferable to not being able to hear; though there might be times when not hearing is preferable, being able to do so at least gives you the choice – which raises the intriguing possibility that someone with a device that he could used to switch his own hearing on or off might be, in that sense at least, very well off indeed: better off than someone with no ability to hear and someone with no ability not to.  (In just the same way, having a car is good all else being equal, even if there’re times when walking is preferable, because you have the option of using it.)

But still: it’s worth keeping in mind that the process of restoring – or instilling – hearing isn’t a straightforward leap from position A to more desirable position B.  There’s an ambiguity about it.  Even granted confidence that B is more desirable, we can’t take it for granted.