40 year-old female Hearing loss at birth from maternal rubella; severe/profound for 25 years Implanted at age 38

The following story is one person's experience with a cochlear implant. Your experience may be very different. Success with a cochlear implant is influenced by many factors including how long a person has had hearing loss, the age a person receives an implant, medical and anatomical factors and more. Please consult your cochlear implant professional and/or the Bionic Ear Association with questions.

Getting a cochlear implant is one of the more gratifying things I've done in my life. It means a lot to me to have the implant, and not a day goes by when I don't enjoy it. I've discovered that toaster ovens make noise when they're done toasting and there's a cereal that really does go snap, crackle, and pop. I always stop and listen to the soda fizz.

But getting a cochlear implant was one of the more challenging things I've done. The decision to get an implant was not one I made lightly.

I was born with a mild hearing loss in the left ear and a severe hearing loss in the right ear. In the course of several weeks before entering junior high school, I lost all aidable hearing in my left ear, and the hearing in the other ear sunk lower. Although I primarily used spoken language and others saw me as hard of hearing, along the way I came to identify as a deaf person and learned some basic sign language. I was content.

But at the same time, I was frustrated with communication demands of working and living in a hearing world. I had a job that required strong communication skills. I used an FM system at meetings-but this only helped if the room was set up so I could speechread the speaker, which wasn't always possible. Afterwards, there were times when I would hear people talking about things that I never knew had been said during the meeting I was at.

I dreaded all social events: The office holiday party; a pizza party for the soccer team; a party at my home. Even with a portable FM system with directional microphones, the background noise and multiple speakers made following a conversation difficult. My husband was often tasked with letting me know the topic of conversation.

On the phone, I used 2-line voice carryover relay service and CapTel relay service when it became available. This allowed me to simultaneously read the text of the conversation and hear the speaker's voice. It greatly reduced my stress on the job, but I still didn't like using the phone and often avoided answering it at home.

Finally, I reconciled two opposing concepts-I could be happy with myself as a deaf person and also want to hear better. The cochlear implant was an option. In this life, I wanted the opportunity to try to use the technology.

• Set goals. I had little faith that an implant would provide much benefit beyond what I already could hear with a hearing aid in the opposite ear, so I set my sights on the future by writing down all of my communication goals for the implant. Some of them were fairly simple, but other goals were loftier. Today, I still revisit my list of goals periodically and think about what I need to do to get to where I want to go.

• Involve your spouse/significant other. My husband was my biggest supporter and came to most of my pre-and post-operative appointments. He asked questions, called professionals, and reported back to me with his newfound discoveries. He became involved in the research, although the final decisions were mine alone.

• Reduce your stress. I made a list of steps to make the candidacy process easier, and followed those which seemed to help, discarding others that weren't working.

Another Beginning
Six weeks after the surgery, the implant was activated in January 2003. Far from being the emotional experience I imagined, the activation was extremely underwhelming. But I wasn't disappointed. I hoped that I would be able to hear sound, and was gratified when I could. When people spoke, they emitted robotic beeps that reminded me of the R2-D2 or C-3PO robots in the "Star Wars" movies. But on the way home from the implant center, my husband turned on some music and for the first time, I could distinguish the sound of drums. It was a start.

Because of the length of deafness, I was prepared for a long, protracted adaptation process, but my biggest surprise was that it was easier than expected. As I acclimated to sounds heard electrically, people's voices took on a more human quality within a week, although I had no ability to understand speech without speechreading at first. Unfamiliar sounds-which were many-were perceived as a high-pitched ring. But the ringing slowly dissipated as I began to identify sounds.

After the third activation, voices sounded similar to the way they had with a hearing aid. Women's voices once again had a feminine quality, although my kid's voices had a raspy, bleary quality for many months. But time and experimenting with variations on a speech-processing strategy took care of my sound quality issues within the first six months.

The Gift
The implant gave me the opportunity to hear things I'd never heard. I reveled in my ability to understand traffic and weather reports and audiobooks. I heard birds before the implant, but now I realized that there is more than one kind of bird chirping away.

I felt as though I'd been given a gift and didn't know what to make of it. And then I knew-the gift was a greater connection to people. My favorite moments were those in which my new hearing abilities were part of a shared experience, such as the time my husband and I listened to political commentary on the radio, and then got into a spirited debate.

But getting an implant involved more than hearing better. It meant changes for others-and myself. The communication dynamics in my family began to change. My husband was dismissed from his role as the occasional interpreter at the dinner table. He also was accustomed to communicating with restaurant personnel. Now, I wanted to order food myself. Later in the year, when my husband and I went to a party, he was my partner and not tasked with letting me know the topic of conversation so I could participate.

After years of marriage, my husband realized that he didn't need to tap my arm to get my attention before talking to me. He didn't need to carefully position himself in relation to the light source while talking to me, or diligently avoid background noise. He also no longer needed to be near me or look at me when talking, or even in the same room.

My kids enjoy talking to me with less repeats. My kids are now preteens and teens and for the first time, I can have a conversation with them in the car-not just at the stoplights or the parking lot. In the backseat, I can hear them fight, whine…and laugh. For years, I watched my children play while they were growing up. But now I can become a little closer to their world as I overhear snatches of conversation as they play with their friends or when I stand outside their door listening to their nightly talks.

In the past 18 months that I've had the implant, we've gone to more movies than in the last several years. Sometimes I can understand almost all of the dialogue in family movies, but others are more difficult. I use the infrared headsets, which bring the sound a little closer and are much more readily available at movie theaters than are captioned movies.

At work, I'm able to succeed with fewer accommodations. I no longer use the FM system at many meetings, and I can participate in telephone seminars without an interpreter. It's easier to use the phone, and I'm no longer reluctant to do so.

I am content as a deaf person, but with the cochlear implant, I enjoy the opportunity to be hard of hearing.