“The biggest problem is attitude – and I had a bad one.”

The Hearing House
6 hours ago
2 min read

Seventy-eight-year-old Paul (Lyn) Thomson received his cochlear implant last November, but he wasn’t happy at first.

“I got my cochlear implant, but at first I didn’t want it,” says Tirau-based Lyn. “I didn’t want it and I wanted to take it out until I came to The Hearing House and met the whānau support counsellor, Hazel.

“She was amazing – she helped me hugely. That was a real turning point for me.”

Lyn, who’s a keen dancer, says his hearing first started to deteriorate around 20 years ago. He relied on hearing aids and lip reading to communicate, but he says there was still a steady change over time in his ability to hear.

“When I was out dancing and I could no longer hear the music, I had to feel the beat through the floor,” he says.

“I got my cochlear implant because hearing aids no longer helped me with my hearing. I didn’t resist as I would have tried anything to be able to hear what was happening around me.”

But Lyn says it wasn’t an easy transition. He says he initially couldn’t access any sound and it wasn’t until nine months later that he had any significant hearing.

“If I’d understood was going to take so long to reach this point, I wouldn’t have been so frustrated,” he says.

“The biggest problem is with attitude,” says Lyn, “and I had a bad attitude. Once I’d got over that, and accepted that I was going to have to learn a whole new way of hearing, I was much better.”

Lyn says that The Hearing House’s Connect and Share events, run by whānau support /counsellor Hazel Benson-Dawe, have been a lifeline.

“It’s good to hear other people’s problems and to know we share something,” he says.

“But initially I found it hard to cope with too many people together. It was also the first time that I was able to speak about my deafness to somebody else who was in the same boat.

“The best thing about meeting people in a similar situation is that it made me feel not so alone – I’d never met anyone else who was deaf when I was out dancing, and I always felt I had to do this whole thing on my own.

“Now it’s good to be able to share and know that other people are going through what I am.”

Lyn is now semi-retired and works part-time for an agricultural contracting business in Tirau mowing lawns, gardening and painting. Along with his wife Val, he enjoys family time with their two sons and two grandchildren.