Tom's BBC moment

You know how it works - your Dad talks to a fellow churchgoer about his grandson's ongoing travails (PCT with shallow pockets, unruly bone growth in his ears, that sort of stuff) and it turns out that her husband is a reporter for the local BBC TV region. Phone numbers are exchanged and before you know it Tom is being shown how a big TV camera works while Nicky and I are being interviewed by Quentin Rayner (mention of whom to my mother and sister led to a conversation of a 'ooh, what's he like in real life? He's good he is' nature).

East Midlands Today regarded the story as important enough to lead with on their evening news yesterday, August 15th. The piece was fair; we were able to make some of the key points and Sue Archbold of the Ear Foundation drew attention to the iniquities that exist in bilateral provision across the country and further afield, and to the growing body of evidence supporting bilaterals.

Sadly, these points don't come across as strongly in the more permanent BBC website news article .

Given Tom's excessive cuteness (or the dearth of other news), it's hardly surprising that the media coverage has spun on from this TV item. As I write this its not yet 8.30 in the morning and we've had a family outing to BBC Radio Nottingham for a quick chat with Karl Cooper ('You're meeting Karl Cooper? Wow! Finally my eight year old nephew is impressed), host of the morning news show. Within five minutes of getting back a journalist from the Nottingham Evening Post appeared at the door - and getting lucky with our doorbell which only fulfils its job description intermittently.

So what will all this amount to? Given our recent experience with the PCT, I don't hold out much hope for a complete volte-face but if the iniquities in funding approaches across the country are held up for examination and the right people become more aware of the complex issues surrounding bilateral implantation then that can only be a good thing.

Alongside that, of course, is the self-examination and the nagging feeling that you didn't get all the points across with the time slots being so squeezed and the medical stuff so easily over-complicated.

Still, Tom certainly likes seeing himself on TV.

'Tom's choo-choo! Mummy! Daddy! The Man!'