These are two stories from Thursday August 3. It was Deaf Club pizza social, and we had about 25 people from 5 pm to 10 pm. Deaf gatherings are always a storm of flying hands back and forth. We had four new guests; a co-worker of mine appeared, two interpreters from Sacramento and a visiting R.I.D. certified interpreter from Michigan made the trip. The interpreter from Michigan was in the area for the R.I.D. Interpreters Workshop that was taking place in San Francisco August 4.

Deaf Club pizza social is open to all, and we had a mixture of mostly Deaf people and interpreters with a few families who had a Deaf family member. I had fun chatting with the interpreter from Michigan. Several of us compared signs (Michigan has a few signs different from California. It’s like having a dialect.) Then we started talking about cochlear implants in deaf children. I knew how the Deaf community in Yuba-Sutter felt, but I wanted to hear it straight from them.

Names have been requested to not be mentioned.

The Woman Who Couldn’t have a CI.
Three years ago, a 20-ish woman was encouraged by her family and doctor to try a cochlear implant. She had the surgery. It took just 5 minutes. She woke up to find herself dizzy and nauseated. She couldn’t get up. After six weeks of suffering, she was able to stand up but had awful headaches that made her nauseated and could not concentrate on work and daily routines.

She went back and forth with her doctor.

Finally, one year later almost to the date, her doctor agreed to have it removed. The surgery took 5 minutes.

The doctor discovered in surgery, that her body had rejected the implant. Normally, over time, the tissue and bone will grow around the processor. In her case, they never grew back during the time the implant was in her head. When she woke up, she was completely recovered. No more headaches and dizziness.

She was able to return to her work and life in just a few days.

The Girl Who Hated Being Deaf
This girl was of elementary grade age, and had a CI since she was a baby. She did not like being referred to as “deaf.” She preferred the term “hearing” because she had a implant and her entire family spoke. No one signed except at the school she was enrolled at.

Interestingly, she was paired with another girl of the same age, who also had a cochlear implant. But this girl was fluent in ASL (American Sign Language), and had an ASL interpreter. To her, ASL was her primary language in which she could understand and communicate in.

The girl who didn’t like being called “deaf” refused to look at the ASL interpreter and often got into trouble for missing a vital information.

One day, the class was out on a horse riding trip. The instructor explained how to control the horse. An interpreter signed out the instructions in ASL to the two girls, but one did not look at her at all. The interpreter cannot force a client to look, so nothing was done. They got on the horses and began up a trail.

The “hearing” girl did not know how to control her horse and her horse soon figured out nobody was controlling it, and began wandering off the trail. The girl started screaming for help. The interpreter signed and tried to speak, but the girl couldn’t understand the interpreter.

She had to be rescued by the lead instructor who had to stop the trail, go back and fetch her.

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