Living with hearing loss: One man's journey back to the world of sound

They say you can never see inside another person's head, but I have. After dressing in theatre scrubs I stepped into the operating theatre and watched as a surgeon threaded a string of electrodes into a gap in Jon Reeve's skull.

I was fascinated by what I saw, relieved that I hadn't fainted, and excited to see the results when the device was switched on in four weeks time.

I had first met Jon, from Long Buckby in Northamptonshire, several weeks before, shortly after he'd been given a date for his cochlear implant operation.

Speaking to him at his desk Northampton I was confused, he seemed to hear every word I said. But Jon was relying on lip-reading to decipher my words.

The hairs in Jon's ears had been damaged, but his auditory nerve was still intact.

A cochlear implant would, in effect, create an electronic ear using a microphone to pick up sounds then sending the information as electrical impulses directly to that nerve - by-passing the inner ear.

His surgeon, Neil Donnelly, explained: "I would be expect he would get to the stage where he would understand what was being said to him without seeing it and ideally being able to use the telephone."

Jon's surgery was complete and he now had to wait for the scars to heal before he could switch on his new implant but the story didn't end there.

Click below to watch Claire McGlasson's first report on Jon's journey back to the world of sound:

• So how did the operation go? Click below to watch part two of Claire McGlasson's special report on Jon Reeve's remarkable journey: