Patients from Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital are part of a ground-breaking Channel 4 documentary which will show the moment they may hear for the very first time since having a cochlear implant fitted.

The television first brings together a group of profoundly deaf people and, over the course of an hour of live broadcast, will give access to the potentially life-altering moment the implant is switched on.

The Birmingham patients are under the expert care of audiologists at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Audiology Centre, who will conduct the switch-on, watched by family and friends.

The implant, an electronic device which stimulates the inner ear, can replace hearing that has been lost and gives access to sounds users were previously unaware of.

Several weeks before the live programme airs on Tuesday 22 November 2016, each person will have undergone surgery to have their cochlear implant fitted. On the night of transmission, the instant each person's implant is switched on will be broadcast live from The Richard Ramsden Centre for Hearing Implants at Manchester Royal Infirmary. It is at that moment that they, their loved ones and viewers will discover just if and what they can hear.

Aged from 32 to 78, men and women, each of the patients have their own personal reasons for choosing this course of action. Some have been profoundly deaf since birth whilst others have lost their hearing as recently as within the last six months. Whilst many people live happy and fulfilled lives with little or no hearing – this group of people have made the very personal choice to have the implants to create or restore hearing in the hope they will positively impact on their lives.

The Birmingham patients

Rebecca

32-year-old Rebecca’s case is highly unusual. She’d had no hearing problems until nine years ago when she lost all hearing in her right ear virtually overnight. Her left ear was absolutely fine and she coped well, getting on with life and going on to have a son, now aged three, who she’s bringing up on her own.

Then in July 2016 she felt unwell one day, dizzy and faint. She went to have a sleep and when she woke up she had gone completely deaf in her left ear. In shock, all she could do was ring her Mum, tell her what had happened and hope she’d heard what she said. She says: “You hear of people being born deaf or gradually losing their hearing, but to wake up and it’s gone, it’s the scariest thing ever.”

Rebecca has been left profoundly deaf. She can’t lip read, she can’t hear her son at all; she has been suddenly thrown into the world of the profoundly deaf, unprepared.

Rebecca’s main focus is being able to communicate with her little boy again at such a crucial stage in his development. Her family tell her he is now speaking in sentences and it upsets her to think she is missing out on so much: “The main thing I want to get out of the implant is to be able to hear my son again.”

Fiona

Fiona, 37, was born deaf to hearing parents, but says she's experienced a slow deterioration in the little hearing she had as the years have gone by. She's married to Michael, who's also profoundly deaf, and they have two hearing children, aged two and a half and one. Fiona and Michael are both British Sign Language users.

Fiona works as a signalling designer for Network Rail. She’s played netball for hearing as well as deaf teams, enjoys nights out salsa dancing... her attitude is, “I get stuck in and have a go. If someone says you can’t do that, I ask why? Because I can’t hear? I think I just need to find another way round… so that’s my life. Up until now I’ve just got on with it”.

Fiona plays the piano, reaching grade seven as a teenager. Even though she can't hear music she says she loves it – she 'feels' it: “Notes on the piano I don’t hear the tone of them, they sound the same to me from bass to treble clef... I had to learn how to do it, I had to read and read the music, memorise it and read and read it again and work hard to remember it and work out where the notes were.“

Fiona was first approached about an implant as a teenager when the operation was only just becoming available, but she felt the operation was too invasive and she feared losing part of her identity. She investigated the idea a few years ago but has only now decided the time is right to go ahead with it. Her husband Michael will be watching with interest – he’s not too sure about cochlear implants, but is supporting Fiona in her choice.

Fiona says she's always wanted to have more sound in her life, but more specifically, she wants to hear her children, who sometimes use her deafness to their advantage…“My daughter has worked out that I can’t hear; she will sneak up the stairs, I panic and run all over the house trying to find her!”

Her dream is that the cochlear implant will allow her to hear the children for the first time and be just like any other Mum: “What if they want to sing? I want hear that! Or play music, do theatre? That’s my motivation, that’s my reward at the end. For the children’s future and my quality of sound. Hopefully it will make my world complete.“