Cochlear Implant Helps Her Hear Sound for the First Time

A cochlear implant has helped this 40-year-old woman from Gateshead, who was born deaf and lost vision in 20s, to hear sound for the first time in life.

A cochlear implant has helped this 40-year-old woman from Gateshead, who was born deaf, to hear sound for the first time in life.

Joanne Milne, 40, from Gateshead, is also a registered blind. She started losing her sight in her 20s due to a medical condition called Usher Syndrome with which she was born.

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"The switch-on was the most emotional and overwhelming experience of my life and I'm still in shock now. The first day everybody sounded robotic and I have to learn to recognise what these sounds are as I build a sound library in my brain," said Milne.

She was operated upon last month, but had to wait for four weeks to find out whether the operation was successful.

When Milne came to know about her operation, she asked her friend Tremayne Crossley to prepare a collection of songs for her. Tremayne selected a song from year of Joanne’s life, and sent the collection to radio presenter Lauren Laverne for her BBC 6Music radio feature Memory Tapes.

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The first song that she heard was John Lennon’s Imagine. And through this, she was able to hear for the first time what music sounds like. Milne has been mentoring others suffering from Usher Syndrome.

She works for charity Sense and said that she understood the world around her in a better way now, And being able to hear will be of great help now given that she is also blind, she said.

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Source-Medindia

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