Activation of a Cochlear Implant

Printed in the Olathe News on July 12, 2007

Activation of a Cochlear Implant
By Leonard Hall

After cochlear implant surgery last month, my implant in the right deaf ear was activated. It is the beginning of a long process of learning to hear in my right ear, which I never heard out of.

The activation has stimulated my brain to learn new sounds through the implant.

Everyone getting a cochlear implant will remember the date of the surgery and the date it was activated.

The implant is the size of a quarter with an electrode wire that is inserted through the cochlear of the inner ear. The external device is a processor that looks like a behind-the-ear hearing aid and magnetically connects with the internal device.

With the growing popularity of Bluetooth devices worn around the ear, no-one noticed my device is part of an implant.

After Lasik eye surgery years ago, I experienced 20/20 vision or better after 3 days of recovery. The key, though, is it’s easier to re-accustom with better eyesight when glasses or contacts provided vision correction before the procedure.

The implant was inserted in my right ear, where I had not worn a hearing aid or heard anything since I was born.

I have 10 to 20 percent speech discrimination in my left ear when I use a hearing aid. However, with the cochlear implant, speech discrimination in my right ear should be better.

Some deaf people who have heard nothing in their lives likely won’t have speech discrimination with their implants. There is a risk that my right ear may not have speech discrimination using an implant.

Upon activation of the implant, I heard only loud high pitched “thingy” sounds. My audiologist remarked that we have a lot of work to do.

My brain became very active in fine-tuning the nerves to learn the sounds coming through the implant. Each time, I visited the audiologist; it was a 3-step process to increase the sensitivity of the sounds to allow my brain to learn new sounds.

On the second day after more adjustments, the sounds became high pitch garbled sounds. A week later, I could distinguish the sounds, but they were unrecognizable, such as trains, cars, trucks, voices, and other environmental sounds.

The voices sound like Minnie Mouse talking; everyone is speaking Japanese or Chinese.
It is a long road to hearing better.
(Leonard Hall writes a weekly column about the deaf community. He can be reached at legalnetwk@aol.com.)