As many of you already know, my daughter had her second cochlear implant surgery on June 11th. The recovery process was very similar to her first surgery in 2001. It was exactly like I remember and the first few days after surgery was pretty painful for her. After a few days, she was back to her normal self. Yesterday, she went back to see the doctor who performed the surgery, He wanted to see her for a post operation follow up. After she was finished with her doctors appointment, she was schedule to see the audiologist so that she could get her new set of ears.
She was very excited and was ready to leave the house after she got up and got dressed. I had inform her that it wasn’t quite time to leave yet. Once it was time to go, we got into the car and headed her doctors office in Dallas. When we arrived at the doctor’s office, my daughter was smiling ear to ear. She was very excited that she was getting her new ears. We wanted her to have the same equipment on both sides of her ears and we were planning on using her old processor as a backup in case something happened to her new processor.
So after waiting for a few minutes in the waiting room, she was finally called back to a room so that she could see the doctor. When the doctor came in, he checked her incision site and the inside of her ear. He said, “everything looked great and that he was pleased with her recovery results.” He also said that he was clearing her so that she could get her implant turned on today. So the nurse took us back to the waiting room after we scheduled a follow up appointment and said that the audiologist would call us back shortly.
After sitting in the waiting room for about 10 to 15 minutes, the audiologist called my daughter’s name and it was time to head to her office to be fitted with her new ears. Before she opened all of the contents, she confirmed that we wanted to fit both ears with the new processors (the external equipment that enables her to be able to hear). I gave her the proper confirmation and she began opening the boxes and assembling the left cochlear implant. The audiologists perform a series of tests to help her determine what levels to set her hearing at. After she finished the testing, she had my daughter remove the right side and she wanted to see if she could hear. Then after she finished adjusting her left side, she uploaded her current program onto the new processor and confirmed that the levels were comfortable on the new processor.
The hearing in my daughter’s left ear was so severe that she didn’t have very much hearing in that ear. She was only able to hear very, very loud sounds using her left ear. So it has been over 16 years, since the nerve inside of her ear hasn’t had any stimulation. It is amazing that my daughter was able to hear the beeps and crackling noises in her left ear. The audiologist said, “that this was very normal.” She explained to us that the noises that she is currently hearing is her auditory nerve firing and that it will take some time before she is able to recognize sounds using her left ear. Over time my daughter will slowly be able to start understanding sounds with her left ear, her left ear will require some training and getting used to before my daughter would be able to hear spoken words and noises out of her left ear. The reason why it takes some getting used to, her brain isn’t used to getting messages from the left auditory nerve and that it will take her brain some time to get used to translating the messages. The messages sent from the auditory nerve to the brain are translated by her brain and her brain is able to figure out what sound she heard.
Her left ear is similar to a newborn baby’s hearing. They don’t know what they are hearing because their brain isn’t familiar with language yet. As a newborn grows up and is taught what sounds and words are, those sounds are stored in the brain. She will need continuous stimulation to her left ear so that she can train it to recognize sounds and words that she has heard before on her right side.
I can’t wait to share her continual improvement over the next few months, as she continues to work with the audiologist to adjust her hearing levels. In fact, she has to return to the audiologist in two weeks for another follow up. The audiologist will adjust her level of hearing in the left ear and see how she is doing with her left ear. I am so thankful for the gift of technology and that it has given my daughter the opportunity to hear. The look on her face was priceless when she was finally able to hear something with her left ear.
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