Como’s Liz Zappia certainly doesn’t take her hearing for granted now that she can hear her children again.
Mrs Zappia was diagnosed with hearing loss as a toddler and has lived most of her life with hearing aids.
Unfortunately, the mother of two experienced a big decline with her hearing in 2015.
Unable to hear her own family, she decided to go under the knife in March 2016 to receive a cochlear implant. The implant has changed her life – giving her back much of her hearing.
Her story was aired on television on Monday night on Channel Nine’s This Time Next Year, hosted by Karl Stefanovic.
She told the Leader it had been a great experience being on the show and she was so happy to have much of her hearing back.
“I managed fairly well with hearing aids until one day at the end of 2015 I noticed that I couldn’t hear out of my hearing aid in my left ear anymore,” she said.
“We tried out the most powerful hearing aids on the market but unfortunately none of them helped me to hear. It was then that I was advised to consider a cochlear implant.”
She said she was assessed in early 2016 and had zero per cent hearing in her left ear and four per cent hearing in her right ear. A few months later she received the implant.
“Ten days after surgery I was ‘switched on’. This means that the implant was turned on,” she said.
“It took about five weeks before I finally heard my first sound which was utensils clattering in the drawer as my husband was unpacking the dishwasher.
“From then on it was like a flower slowly opening. I would hear new sounds over time and then eventually I started to pick up speech sounds and that’s when I was able to hear my children for the first time.
“My hearing was assessed in January 2016 and it was zero per cent. In January 2017, it was 64 per cent which is incredible.”
