How a Cochlear Implant Changed My Child’s Life

It seems like yesterday. December 24, 1998. Reluctantly, we had taken the last appointment available before the end of the year. We didn’t really want to have our fears acknowledged on Christmas Eve, but here we were, sitting in a little room receiving the news. ”Our tests show that Ryan has a profound hearing loss. He is not hearing anything, and probably never has.” Our hearts sank. I looked down at this precious little 2-½ month old, and just started crying. ”I don’t understand-he seems to hear me when I sing.”

”It’s probably just the breath on his face.”

I sat very still, almost numb, for the rest of the visit, not really hearing the options, the outlook, or the opportunities that lay ahead.

After the shock wore off, after the tears were shed, we finally started to look to the future. Four different times in the next two months, we saw TV shows featuring the cochlear implant. Shows that we normally don’t watch would keep our eyes glued to the television. Friends would call and say, ”Hey-there’s a show on about this thing that might help Ryan.” It was almost as if God were saying, ”Here’s an option to look into.” We kept our newly found knowledge about this remarkable technology in the back of our minds and started to learn about how to raise a deaf child.

Ryan was our first-born child. He was a big 8 pound, 14 ounce baby boy. All went fine in delivery. We checked out two days later, expecting no complications. Our hospital did not offer newborn hearing screening, and with no known hearing loss in the family, we felt no need to worry. About a month later, though, we began to wonder. Ryan was never startled when the dog barked; he never turned to our voices; he never woke at loud noises in the night. Fortunately, our pediatrician moved quickly and referred us to an audiologist when we voiced our concern.

After the initial testing was complete, we wanted to know why this happened. A CAT Scan revealed Ryan had Enlarged Vestibular Aqueduct Syndrome. The damage had been done before birth, and it seemed to be ”just something that happened”. Looking into our history, we found a great-great-grandmother was deaf. But all who knew her were gone. Was she deaf from birth? Did she have an illness? No one knew. So, we trudged on, knowing that trying to figure out why this happened was not what we should be focusing on. One of the doctors we talked to told us that we, Ryan’s parents, needed to decide whether we wanted to put Ryan into a hearing world or a non-hearing world. Without even discussing it, we knew that we wanted to put him in a hearing world if at all possible. We had to get Ryan on his way to hearing.

He was fitted with his first hearing aids on February 26, 1999. They looked so big on his little four-month-old ears. His response was not an earth-shattering one, so we really didn’t know what all he was hearing. He wore them faithfully, but we knew he was not getting enough from them to hear all the speech sounds. We started looking into the implant.

We talked to lots of different people-some for the implant and some against it. We did quite a bit of research and finally decided to give Ryan the opportunity to hear. On December 23, 1999, almost a year to the day after learning about his hearing loss, Ryan was implanted with a Clarion cochlear implant. He was 14 ½ months old. Hold his Pooh bear and sucking on his binky, he was given to me to hold after the surgery. My husband and I were wondering how we could’ve done this to our baby. He looked like a little war vet. I had to tell myself several times that we have just given Ryan so many opportunities in life by giving him the implant. We took him home that same day. He healed very quickly and enjoyed Christmas very much. People could not believe we would have him undergo surgery right before Christmas, but to us, it was the best Christmas present we could have given him.

A month later, on January 21, 2000, Ryan was ”turned on” to sound!! It was an emotional day, but one of great joy. As his first map was made, we watched Ryan’s expressions as he was trying to process the beeps he was hearing through his implant. He seemed to be in awe of the laptop computer that he was hooked up to. He knew it was doing some pretty neat things. The map was made, and the processor was finally turned on. Ryan looked around and smiled at us as we said his name. Tears filled our eyes in amazement. He began to turn to his name about two day after hook-up. This is unusual, I guess. I know the use of his hearing aids helped him develop this ability so quickly. He had been turning to his name with aids, too, but the implant sound was a different sound to get used to.

Ryan began hearing Ellie, our dog. The first time she barked he nearly jumped out of his skin! Once he knew what this sound was he would sit and watch Ellie bark and laugh. They seemed to become much better friends after this exchange.

Ryan had begun speech therapy when he was 8 months old. By the time he was implanted at 14 months, he was saying about 10 words. Almost all of these words were just representations of words (”ma” for more, ”uh” for up). We continued the therapy and worked very hard at home after hook-up. He seemed to pick things up very quickly, and seemed very motivated to learn new words. ”What’s dat?”, he would say as he pointed to everything in sight. He was very curious.

From the very beginning of Ryan’s experience with his implant, he has seemed to enjoy the sounds that he receives through it. The first thing he does when he gets up in the morning is walk to his battery charger and picks out a battery. Lately, he’s been saying, ”This one all right?” After nodding my head ”yes”, he gives it to me and patiently waits for me to get it on the processor and into a harness for him.

Once it’s on, it’s on for the day. A very loud ”UH-OH” is heard if the headpiece is brushed off his head by something. A look of wonderment is seen when the battery goes dead in the evening. ”I need a new battery, Mom,” is all he says as he marches to the battery charger.

One day in the summer of 2000, I remember sitting on our deck with Ryan. He was playing with a tractor, stopped suddenly, and said, ”Fwee, fwee”. I stopped to listen carefully and realized he was hearing a bird that was singing in the tree. This was a sound that so many of us, including myself, just block out. I said to him, ”Do you hear the bird?” He said ”Fwee, fwee” again. I started to cry. That was something that just a year and a half before; I just knew he would never hear. I still get chills thinking about that day and what a miracle the implant really is.

Many times a day Ryan looks at one of us and says, ”Did you hear that?” His finger is almost always on his cheek when he says that. I’m sure that has evolved from all the conditioned response testing he’s done in therapy! Many of the sounds he’s hearing are things that we tend to tune out in our everyday lives: the furnace kicking on, a big truck going by our house, a train blowing its whistle in the distance. One day he even pointed out to us that he heard the ”tick, tick, tick” of the clock on the wall. We were in a pretty small room with hardwood floors, so I’m sure the ticking was amplified compared to other rooms. But I was still amazed that a sound so small could have an impact on Ryan.

We continue to do therapy and a weekly schooling at an oral school for the deaf. Ryan is doing extremely well. At the age of 26 months, he was testing at or above age level in all areas, including receptive and expressive language. He is a very normal two-and-a-half year-old boy who loves to do the things that other kids love to do. He loves basketball, play-doh, the outdoors and music. In fact, music plays a big part in his life. As much time as we spend on the road, music tapes have been a lifesaver. As he is beginning to sing, he is doing a great job stopping and starting at the right time. As well as raising and lowering his pitch as the song demonstrates. I hope he continues this love of music.

The past year and a half has been full of victories for Ryan and our family. We have seen him go from a fairly quiet child to a child who has so much to say, and is so excited to say it. We feel very fortunate that the technology was available to us, and that we took full advantage of it.

A person once said to me, ”You should let Ryan make the decision to get an implant or not to get one.” As I look back on that bit of ”advice”, I feel that if we had done that, we would have missed out on these first three critical years of language development. I feel that we are giving him a choice. If he decides someday that he doesn’t want to wear the implant, he can take it off. But as much sound and enjoyment from that sound as he gets out of his implant, I can’t really see him ever wanting to be without it. It has certainly been a life-changing piece of technology and decision that we made for Ryan. It’s one decision that I know we will never regret –

R.K. Griggsville, IL