I got an email forwarded to me from Claudia Hollis, Branch Manager of FREED about an important information from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Cochlear Implants.

Anyone with an implant, especially parents of children with an implant, and those considering an implant, are advised to be sure they are fully and up to date on their vaccinations due to risk of life-threatening bacterical meningitis. Children of a positioner component are at greatest risk for infection. This particular component was pulled off the market in July 2, 2002.

Here is the original release from FDA Medical Safety online.

A story from a mother of a deaf son. She has requested names to be confidential as it is a strange story that she still has trouble believing. Even I did, after I heard it.

Her Deaf son met a relative the same age as him, with the same level of hearing loss, which is 110 decibel in the right ear and 70 decibels in the left ear. He had a cochlear implant behind the left ear, her son did not. Her son has BTE (Behind The Ear) hearing aids. Both boys were in mainstreamed schools but in different states. Both knew American Sign Language and could hear quite well with their hearing aides. Both had speech therapy but the boy with the implant had additional cochlear implant training to become strictly speaking and hearing without using sign language.

Guess who spoke the most clear?

The Deaf son with BTE hearing aids who continued to communicate in American Sign Language.

The mother told me that very meeting made her realize that cochlear implants do not guarantee anything. She had once considered having her son implanted but chose to let him make the decision. He chose not to be implanted and identifies himself as Deaf.

Who knows? Maybe the boy with the implant did not have a good therapist. But it was rather strange that two boys who are nearly identical, would have such different results.

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.

Continuing the presentation of stories of actual cochlear implant users.

A little explanation and introduction here: The person telling the story is my best friend, Shelby H. She is an interpreter in training going for her R.I.D. certification and specialization in Criminal Justice Interpreting. Shelby and I love chatting about various topics, but one of them is Deaf Culture. During a visit, she told me a story of her first time meeting a deaf child with a cochlear implant.

She was at her other best friend’s house for a summer party last year. Her hostess’ boyfriend had a friend whose girlfriend was the mother of a 9-year old deaf girl.

Knowing Shelby, she will home in on anyone who signs. So when she noticed the mother and daughter signing in “broken sign language,” meaning it was in a mixture of spoken words and signs, she got excited at seeing sign language and went over to meet them. When the girl turned to face Shelby, she saw the cochlear implant. It was Shelby’s first time seeing an implant in person instead of pictures and videos, and her gut reaction was to be shocked.

The three started chatting. The mother told Shelby that they try to talk to the girl rather than signing, to teach her to use voice and hearing. The girl was immediately taken with Shelby and carried on conversations, following her around and signing. The girl spoke but it was obvious to Shelby who spends nearly all of her daily living around Deaf, Deaf-Blind, Oralists, or Hard of Hearing people, that the girl’s speech was of someone born deaf.

It was time to eat, so they went to fix plates to eat. Shelby found herself next to the mother again, without the girl. Shelby’s curiosity was so great that she asked the mother why the girl had a implant. The mother replied that the implant was to give the girl a better chance at life because deaf people don’t have as many opportunities and can’t make good living or hold real jobs.

Of course, knowing my friend, she would rise to challenge. Shelby told the mother about the Deaf people she works with and citied examples. The mother was shocked. She had no idea that there were Deaf people working in technical jobs, raising families, voting, serving on juries, and going through college/universities. Shelby said, “I told her about my best friend who is Deaf and works at a newspaper as web master. She works with hearing people who don’t sign. She does just FINE!”

I asked Shelby if she thought the implant helped the girl. She said that she saw the girl take off the external processor because the noise bothered her, and she preferred to sign. She was like glue to Shelby, following her around and signing. Because sign language was 100% accessible to her rather than guessing at sounds.

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By the way, Shelby texted me on Wednesday that she scored 4.2 out of 5 on her EIPA (Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment). Congratulations! Who would have thought that the red-haired girl signing “H-I my name is S-H-E-L-B-Y” to a belligerent Deaf girl at American River College’s cafeteria, would become an interpreter of the Yuba-Sutter and Sacramento area!

For those who don’t know what the EIPA is, it is an assessment test that looks at an interpreter’s skills. It also targets areas for further development and provides professional development recommendations.
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