Tad
I was born with full hearing in both ears in Virginia in 1966. In 1968, at the age of two, I contracted spinal meningitis, which caused me to lose all of the hearing in my left ear, and most of it in my right ear. At that time, I was considered severely deaf.
Although I attended extensive speech therapy, and was forever scrambling to follow my instructors, I did grow up "mainstreamed," attending public schools, living and functioning in the hearing world to the best of my ability.
As would be the case, the hearing aid that I wore in my right ear was both a blessing and a curse. It gave me the ability to hear environmental sounds to a degree; however, the aid had to be turned up so loud that it was also slowly degrading what was left of my hearing in my right ear.
In March 1999, when I was 32 years old, I played golf one Saturday. I will never forget that day. It was cold and very windy. It was not the discomfort that bothered me. Rather, I had howling wind in my hearing aid microphone all day. Actually, when I think about it, the noise did not bother me, either. I had been deaf so long that I was used to it. When I woke up the next day, I felt like my hearing was such that I had the hearing sensation of having a cold, except 100 times worse. By the end of the day, I knew my hearing was not going to improve anytime soon. To top it off, I had severe tinnitus, or ringing of the ears, that was so bad it sounded like a fire alarm existed in my head.
After experiencing severe depression for about a week, I began aggressively researching my alternatives. I checked out some informative cochlear implant sites, but kept my enthusiasm in check, mainly because my knowledge of implants was limited to the research I had done in the 1980s, and I was almost sure that cochlear implants would not help me.
Well, one thing led to another, and during the process of having my hearing checked, I heard about an audiologist working at a local hospital who wore a cochlear implant himself. Yeah, that's right, an implanted audie! I made arrangements to visit this man immediately. Jack was so happy and matter-of-fact about his implant! He did not wear a MED-EL device, but had a good friend who did, and candidly told me that MED-EL users were doing impressively well.
My audiologists at MCV gave me a list of patients who had MED-EL implants done recently. Ironically, one of them, Rex J., lived about a ¼ mile from my house. Rex came over one day with his wife, and we just sat and talked for about 2 hours. I asked every question that I could think of, and each answer strengthened my conviction that I was going to select the MED-EL COMBI 40+ as my implant system. If offered both the body unit (CIS Pro+) and the behind-the-ear-unit (Tempo). The battery life in the BTE was far superior to the competition's at the time, and as a hearing aid user, I was sensitive to the costs of batteries.
I was on track to be implanted the first week of September in 1999 when I received a phone call from my wife around the third week of August. After about 10 minutes of trying to talk, we decided to resort to e-mail. I knew it must be an important message, as no one knew more than my wife did exactly how bad I was on the telephone! I only picked up because I had caller ID!
Well, there it was, on the screen in front of me. My wife's e-mail was not good news. My insurance company had denied coverage of the cochlear implant surgery. I was STUNNED. I felt bad for about a day, but I had already been through so much adversity, that I tackled this one head on. I fired off a passionate three-page letter to the insurance company pleading my case. The insurance company's grounds for refusal were a clause "that denied coverage for any hearing amplification device." Well, my audiologist at MCV knew that MED-EL retained a lawyer in the United States exclusively for the purpose of fighting claim denials. The lawyer had a form letter stating that cochlear implants are not hearing devices, but rather prostheses. That's right, they do not amplify, they "substitute"! That is, the implant does the work of some of the damaged ear components necessary for hearing.
After three weeks of waiting, the insurance company approved me for the coverage of the surgery! The ball was rolling once again. I was finally implanted on November 5, 1999 at the Medical College of Virginia. It was a pretty good experience. I had the surgery at approximately 8:00 a.m. that morning and it lasted roughly 3 hours. When I came out of it, I had a slight headache, and a bandaged head. I was also very sleepy! I understood through lip-reading that the surgery was a success, and that the device tested successfully after implantation. Boy, was that a relief!
My challenge was now to be patient! I could not hear at all until I was activated, which was scheduled to be on December 20th, 1999, five weeks away. My goodness, the closer I got to the activation date, the more frenzied my mind (and stomach) got with excitement. I was trying very hard to keep my expectations realistic, and expect very moderate results the whole time. This would be just fine with me, and the alternative was no hearing at all.
My activation day began with, of course, extreme nervousness, most of it experienced by my wife of six years, Lynne. I was pretty quiet, preferring to mentally prepare myself for whatever might be, ranging from pleasant surprise to utter disappointment. When we got to the hospital, all I could think about was all of the testimony I had either heard or read about that pointed towards the first sounds being similar to "Mickey Mouse voices, Darth Vader's voice, bells, whistles, chirps, and beeps, etc."
The first step in a mapping (programming) session (activation day was actually my first mapping session) is to establish the thresholds. As you may or may not know, part of the implant is the electrode array that inserts into the cochlea itself. On this array, there are channels that are spaced equidistantly over the array. I was tested for each channel independently, to establish a sense of what was "uncomfortably loud" for each channel.
When I heard my first beep on my first channel, I knew I was in for a special treat! Even though it was very low in volume, naturally due to the fact that threshold testing begins at low volumes, it was beautiful! The best analogy I can think of is to compare it to vision: how a person sees without their corrective lenses on, and how they see with eyeglasses on. Sound was now so crisp! The mapping beeps were so easy to hear. I knew exactly when the sound began, and when it ended.
Okay! I know knew my environmental hearing was going to be just fine. But how would speech interpretation/translation be? This is a whole different ballgame, requiring that the sounds be a close as possible in similarity to the actual analog soundwave, as opposed to just hearing a generated sound. As soon as Sean, my audie, told me he was done mapping, and was going to activate the microphone, boy, did I really get the jitters! He started talking, and boom, I heard him almost immediately! He sounded very whispery, lots of emphasis on the "s" sound. My recollection of the word "house," hindsight being 20/20, was probably just the "ou" vowel sound. Now, "house" sounded like "houssssssssse."
I now realize that the reason the "s" sound in my first map was so pronounced was simply due to the fact that I had never heard, or at least had no memory of high frequency sounds. All my life, I had been dependent upon speech-reading to fill in the blanks. In fact, the whole experience for me personally dealt with this high frequency sound spectrum. On my way home from my first map, I raised and lowered my power window, and for the first time, I heard the click of the window button as I pushed it back and forth. In the past, I had only heard the hum of the window raising and lowering. That same day, I heard my first "soda." Heh, that's right, I heard the fizz of the carbonation. For two days, I could not stop carrying a drink around, because I loved the sound of ice cubes tinkling against each other and the glass.
I also made my first phone call that first day, and I talked to my nephew, Mark, who was difficult to understand, but we had a conversation! Don't get me wrong, I had a long way to go…the radio sounded like "pots and pans." I still needed caption on the television, etc. But the progress from where I had been was unbelievable. I had won my war. As far as I was concerned, anything else was icing on the cake.
And guess what? A lot of icing it was! I celebrated my first anniversary of activation just a couple of weeks ago, on 12/20/2000. I now have a job working as a senior analyst, actively using the phone everyday, attending boardroom meetings, video-conferencing, etc. I am beginning my work towards my Master's degree, which I am so excited about, as I have always struggled to take notes and keep up with what was going on. I can now hear the DJ's on the radio, including the news, weather, comedy, etc. I can hear newscasts without caption on the television. I can do lots of things I could not do as little as six months ago!
I am still working on some things: hearing in a movie theater, which is a challenge due to sound effects and voice changes due to fear, action, and other emotional movie drama. I have now realized that my perfect ideal of hearing is not perfect. I only hear out of my right ear. As a comparative example, one of my salesmen is a Vietnam veteran who lost hearing in his left ear and only hears out of his right. It's pretty obvious that he cannot hear out of one ear, and I hear so "well" now, that my lack of hearing in my left ear is actually more noticeable to me! I never felt deaf in my left ear when I wore a hearing aid in my right ear.
I have not really turned my newfound capabilities towards music, yet, as I am still fascinated by language, and enjoy listening to the news and comedic DJ's on the way to work. However, I must say that music is so melodic and a true pleasure to listen to, now.
I also have to continually be realistic. For example, while listening to loud music, I cannot actively monitor my youngest child's baby monitor. I can hear the monitor, but only if I "pay attention." Trying to talk to my wife while my two older children are chattering away in the back seat of the car is difficult at times. On the other hand, I really enjoy being able to drive at night and have a conversation with my wife without having to look at her! My phone use at first required an absolutely silent environment. Now I use the phone around moderate environmental noise, but occasionally hit roadblocks, such as the time I tried to call my wife from an extremely busy and loud airport. These things take time, but what I have seen is that with time, these things always improve. I have done a lot of research, and it all points toward continual hearing improvement with the implant, even 20 years from now.
I would like to end this testimonial story with a tribute to my wife, Lynne. She was there for me in the beginning, when she knew I was severely-hard-of-hearing and still wanted no other than I when I proposed to her, when I said "through sickness and death" rather that the proper "sickness and health" at my wedding rehearsal (yeah, this one is famous and still good for a laugh at my expense<smile>). She was there every day, when I asked her to make a phone call for me, to tell me what happened during a social conversation, or when I pestered her after a movie to tell me exactly what happened during such and such scene. She was there when I lost most of what I had left on that fateful March day. She urged me to get out of my "funk" and do something when I was depressed, and provided encouragement when my insurance denied coverage, temporarily denying me surgery. Family support is very important. Thank you to all of my friends and family, but especially to my wife, Lynne.
As a matter of fact, sometimes I think that my newfound independence disturbed her, as she was so used to "taking care of me." But the reality is, my whole family is much less stressed because of this gift. My wife is more relaxed, I am more relaxed and less defensive. My children are no longer frustrated over their efforts to communicate with me. Indeed, I think one of the top challenges of being deaf or hard-of-hearing is communication with the little tykes. They themselves are learning to talk, and are not the clearest of enunciators. Now, to my chagrin, my oldest daughter is more worldly-wise to the world of sound than I <smile>. She knows all of the top songs, and even likes the Beatles. I have been around for 34 years, and I still don't know the words of a single Beatles song, other than, "I wanna hold your hand." Haha, true, though.
To me, good medicine is all about improving the quality of one's life, both spiritually and physically. Let me tell you, a cochlear implant does not just improve the patient's quality of life, but also the quality of each and every loved one's life, indeed, all family and friends, as well. I see this just as surely as I know that turn for the better that my hearing and communication capabilities took. This is one of the best investments I ever made. I truly feel like an asset to society, and I thank all of those dedicated and generous souls whose efforts led to this modern day miracle.
In life we live. In living we trust with conviction, care with love, weep with sorrow, cry with happiness. In hearing, we communicate these emotions, not just in words, but in the simple sounds that reflect all of life's joys and frustrations.
Many more user stories are available on the Hearing Companion database. Please be sure to check it out!
Although I attended extensive speech therapy, and was forever scrambling to follow my instructors, I did grow up "mainstreamed," attending public schools, living and functioning in the hearing world to the best of my ability.
As would be the case, the hearing aid that I wore in my right ear was both a blessing and a curse. It gave me the ability to hear environmental sounds to a degree; however, the aid had to be turned up so loud that it was also slowly degrading what was left of my hearing in my right ear.
In March 1999, when I was 32 years old, I played golf one Saturday. I will never forget that day. It was cold and very windy. It was not the discomfort that bothered me. Rather, I had howling wind in my hearing aid microphone all day. Actually, when I think about it, the noise did not bother me, either. I had been deaf so long that I was used to it. When I woke up the next day, I felt like my hearing was such that I had the hearing sensation of having a cold, except 100 times worse. By the end of the day, I knew my hearing was not going to improve anytime soon. To top it off, I had severe tinnitus, or ringing of the ears, that was so bad it sounded like a fire alarm existed in my head.
After experiencing severe depression for about a week, I began aggressively researching my alternatives. I checked out some informative cochlear implant sites, but kept my enthusiasm in check, mainly because my knowledge of implants was limited to the research I had done in the 1980s, and I was almost sure that cochlear implants would not help me.
Well, one thing led to another, and during the process of having my hearing checked, I heard about an audiologist working at a local hospital who wore a cochlear implant himself. Yeah, that's right, an implanted audie! I made arrangements to visit this man immediately. Jack was so happy and matter-of-fact about his implant! He did not wear a MED-EL device, but had a good friend who did, and candidly told me that MED-EL users were doing impressively well.
My audiologists at MCV gave me a list of patients who had MED-EL implants done recently. Ironically, one of them, Rex J., lived about a ¼ mile from my house. Rex came over one day with his wife, and we just sat and talked for about 2 hours. I asked every question that I could think of, and each answer strengthened my conviction that I was going to select the MED-EL COMBI 40+ as my implant system. If offered both the body unit (CIS Pro+) and the behind-the-ear-unit (Tempo). The battery life in the BTE was far superior to the competition's at the time, and as a hearing aid user, I was sensitive to the costs of batteries.
I was on track to be implanted the first week of September in 1999 when I received a phone call from my wife around the third week of August. After about 10 minutes of trying to talk, we decided to resort to e-mail. I knew it must be an important message, as no one knew more than my wife did exactly how bad I was on the telephone! I only picked up because I had caller ID!
Well, there it was, on the screen in front of me. My wife's e-mail was not good news. My insurance company had denied coverage of the cochlear implant surgery. I was STUNNED. I felt bad for about a day, but I had already been through so much adversity, that I tackled this one head on. I fired off a passionate three-page letter to the insurance company pleading my case. The insurance company's grounds for refusal were a clause "that denied coverage for any hearing amplification device." Well, my audiologist at MCV knew that MED-EL retained a lawyer in the United States exclusively for the purpose of fighting claim denials. The lawyer had a form letter stating that cochlear implants are not hearing devices, but rather prostheses. That's right, they do not amplify, they "substitute"! That is, the implant does the work of some of the damaged ear components necessary for hearing.
After three weeks of waiting, the insurance company approved me for the coverage of the surgery! The ball was rolling once again. I was finally implanted on November 5, 1999 at the Medical College of Virginia. It was a pretty good experience. I had the surgery at approximately 8:00 a.m. that morning and it lasted roughly 3 hours. When I came out of it, I had a slight headache, and a bandaged head. I was also very sleepy! I understood through lip-reading that the surgery was a success, and that the device tested successfully after implantation. Boy, was that a relief!
My challenge was now to be patient! I could not hear at all until I was activated, which was scheduled to be on December 20th, 1999, five weeks away. My goodness, the closer I got to the activation date, the more frenzied my mind (and stomach) got with excitement. I was trying very hard to keep my expectations realistic, and expect very moderate results the whole time. This would be just fine with me, and the alternative was no hearing at all.
My activation day began with, of course, extreme nervousness, most of it experienced by my wife of six years, Lynne. I was pretty quiet, preferring to mentally prepare myself for whatever might be, ranging from pleasant surprise to utter disappointment. When we got to the hospital, all I could think about was all of the testimony I had either heard or read about that pointed towards the first sounds being similar to "Mickey Mouse voices, Darth Vader's voice, bells, whistles, chirps, and beeps, etc."
The first step in a mapping (programming) session (activation day was actually my first mapping session) is to establish the thresholds. As you may or may not know, part of the implant is the electrode array that inserts into the cochlea itself. On this array, there are channels that are spaced equidistantly over the array. I was tested for each channel independently, to establish a sense of what was "uncomfortably loud" for each channel.
When I heard my first beep on my first channel, I knew I was in for a special treat! Even though it was very low in volume, naturally due to the fact that threshold testing begins at low volumes, it was beautiful! The best analogy I can think of is to compare it to vision: how a person sees without their corrective lenses on, and how they see with eyeglasses on. Sound was now so crisp! The mapping beeps were so easy to hear. I knew exactly when the sound began, and when it ended.
Okay! I know knew my environmental hearing was going to be just fine. But how would speech interpretation/translation be? This is a whole different ballgame, requiring that the sounds be a close as possible in similarity to the actual analog soundwave, as opposed to just hearing a generated sound. As soon as Sean, my audie, told me he was done mapping, and was going to activate the microphone, boy, did I really get the jitters! He started talking, and boom, I heard him almost immediately! He sounded very whispery, lots of emphasis on the "s" sound. My recollection of the word "house," hindsight being 20/20, was probably just the "ou" vowel sound. Now, "house" sounded like "houssssssssse."
I now realize that the reason the "s" sound in my first map was so pronounced was simply due to the fact that I had never heard, or at least had no memory of high frequency sounds. All my life, I had been dependent upon speech-reading to fill in the blanks. In fact, the whole experience for me personally dealt with this high frequency sound spectrum. On my way home from my first map, I raised and lowered my power window, and for the first time, I heard the click of the window button as I pushed it back and forth. In the past, I had only heard the hum of the window raising and lowering. That same day, I heard my first "soda." Heh, that's right, I heard the fizz of the carbonation. For two days, I could not stop carrying a drink around, because I loved the sound of ice cubes tinkling against each other and the glass.
I also made my first phone call that first day, and I talked to my nephew, Mark, who was difficult to understand, but we had a conversation! Don't get me wrong, I had a long way to go…the radio sounded like "pots and pans." I still needed caption on the television, etc. But the progress from where I had been was unbelievable. I had won my war. As far as I was concerned, anything else was icing on the cake.
And guess what? A lot of icing it was! I celebrated my first anniversary of activation just a couple of weeks ago, on 12/20/2000. I now have a job working as a senior analyst, actively using the phone everyday, attending boardroom meetings, video-conferencing, etc. I am beginning my work towards my Master's degree, which I am so excited about, as I have always struggled to take notes and keep up with what was going on. I can now hear the DJ's on the radio, including the news, weather, comedy, etc. I can hear newscasts without caption on the television. I can do lots of things I could not do as little as six months ago!
I am still working on some things: hearing in a movie theater, which is a challenge due to sound effects and voice changes due to fear, action, and other emotional movie drama. I have now realized that my perfect ideal of hearing is not perfect. I only hear out of my right ear. As a comparative example, one of my salesmen is a Vietnam veteran who lost hearing in his left ear and only hears out of his right. It's pretty obvious that he cannot hear out of one ear, and I hear so "well" now, that my lack of hearing in my left ear is actually more noticeable to me! I never felt deaf in my left ear when I wore a hearing aid in my right ear.
I have not really turned my newfound capabilities towards music, yet, as I am still fascinated by language, and enjoy listening to the news and comedic DJ's on the way to work. However, I must say that music is so melodic and a true pleasure to listen to, now.
I also have to continually be realistic. For example, while listening to loud music, I cannot actively monitor my youngest child's baby monitor. I can hear the monitor, but only if I "pay attention." Trying to talk to my wife while my two older children are chattering away in the back seat of the car is difficult at times. On the other hand, I really enjoy being able to drive at night and have a conversation with my wife without having to look at her! My phone use at first required an absolutely silent environment. Now I use the phone around moderate environmental noise, but occasionally hit roadblocks, such as the time I tried to call my wife from an extremely busy and loud airport. These things take time, but what I have seen is that with time, these things always improve. I have done a lot of research, and it all points toward continual hearing improvement with the implant, even 20 years from now.
I would like to end this testimonial story with a tribute to my wife, Lynne. She was there for me in the beginning, when she knew I was severely-hard-of-hearing and still wanted no other than I when I proposed to her, when I said "through sickness and death" rather that the proper "sickness and health" at my wedding rehearsal (yeah, this one is famous and still good for a laugh at my expense<smile>). She was there every day, when I asked her to make a phone call for me, to tell me what happened during a social conversation, or when I pestered her after a movie to tell me exactly what happened during such and such scene. She was there when I lost most of what I had left on that fateful March day. She urged me to get out of my "funk" and do something when I was depressed, and provided encouragement when my insurance denied coverage, temporarily denying me surgery. Family support is very important. Thank you to all of my friends and family, but especially to my wife, Lynne.
As a matter of fact, sometimes I think that my newfound independence disturbed her, as she was so used to "taking care of me." But the reality is, my whole family is much less stressed because of this gift. My wife is more relaxed, I am more relaxed and less defensive. My children are no longer frustrated over their efforts to communicate with me. Indeed, I think one of the top challenges of being deaf or hard-of-hearing is communication with the little tykes. They themselves are learning to talk, and are not the clearest of enunciators. Now, to my chagrin, my oldest daughter is more worldly-wise to the world of sound than I <smile>. She knows all of the top songs, and even likes the Beatles. I have been around for 34 years, and I still don't know the words of a single Beatles song, other than, "I wanna hold your hand." Haha, true, though.
To me, good medicine is all about improving the quality of one's life, both spiritually and physically. Let me tell you, a cochlear implant does not just improve the patient's quality of life, but also the quality of each and every loved one's life, indeed, all family and friends, as well. I see this just as surely as I know that turn for the better that my hearing and communication capabilities took. This is one of the best investments I ever made. I truly feel like an asset to society, and I thank all of those dedicated and generous souls whose efforts led to this modern day miracle.
In life we live. In living we trust with conviction, care with love, weep with sorrow, cry with happiness. In hearing, we communicate these emotions, not just in words, but in the simple sounds that reflect all of life's joys and frustrations.
Many more user stories are available on the Hearing Companion database. Please be sure to check it out!
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