• 7 year-old child
• Hearing loss since birth
• Cochlear implant at age two

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.

December 6, 1996. The most blessed day of our lives as a family. After almost 6 years of hoping, wishing, praying, and even begging for a child, our beautiful Allison Cheyenne was born. She was the answer to our prayers and stole our hearts immediately. Of course her father and I were instantly in love.

Now, 7 years later, those early warning signs seem to come back like scenes from a terrible movie that you try really hard to forget. Like sitting in the floor being so amazed that your 6 week old is so calm that even loud noises don't frighten her. Or how Cheyenne would sit and play so long without fussing or getting distracted. Everyone commented that she was such a good, quiet baby and how she seemed to notice details at such an early age. But she was just a normal baby….right?

Cheyenne's hearing loss was officially diagnosed at 15 months. Because she had recently had some ear infections and fluid, PE tubes were inserted. Her hearing was tested again with the ABR test, and it was determined that her loss was severe-profound. I suppose it seems unbelievable, but at that point her father and I were glad that we could finally identify a cause for her speech delay and begin to help her.

Cheyenne was fitted with hearing aids and immediately began therapy. Unfortunately, many hearing aids and much therapy later, we had to admit that her language progress was very limited at best. We were introduced to the cochlear implant by her ENT and began our own personal research. Cheyenne went through the battery of tests and was deemed a great candidate. Meanwhile, we spent our time meeting with families of children with cochlear implants, doing on-line research, and reading anything we could get your hands on.

Time and time again, we heard the same sentiment from families throughout the world: The road ahead of you is not an easy one, but if you chose the Clarion, Advanced Bionics will support you through it all. I must admit, at the time a lot of the technical reasons that Advanced Bionics products are superior meant nothing to me. I didn't speak that language yet. All we knew was that we needed a company that would support us and help us through this process. With Advanced Bionics, that is exactly what we got!

The day of Cheyenne's initial stimulation is burned in my memory. We were taken to a tiny room in the ENT office where representatives from Advanced Bionics, the audiologists, her father and I, as well as a camera crew from the local news station were crammed together. It was a long hour filled with anxiety, but finally, she showed us an indication that she was hearing! I remember that the trip home was a mixture of jabbering, laughing, sounds, crying, and jubilation!

Let me fast forward about 5 years. Cheyenne is now a healthy, happy seven-and-a-half year-old 2nd grader. She hears! I still sometimes get teary-eyed just thinking about it. She is in the mainstream class and is only pulled out for speech therapy. She is an avid reader (6th in her K-5 school last year) and never stops talking. She loves basketball, dance, hand bells, and competition Power Tumbling. She socializes like any seven year old and has many normal hearing friends.

I could go on forever about the things that this implant has allowed Cheyenne to do and become. She can be anything. I will admit that there are times when we have to work around problems or insure she has the support that she needs, but in her mind and all those around her, Cheyenne is just a normal 7 year old girl. She even sometimes says that she wants to learn sign language so she can interpret for people who can't hear. In her mind, she can do anything.

I don't want to give the impression that this has all happened easily or quickly. Cheyenne has worked hard to get to where she is and will have to continue to improve her language, vocabulary, and grammar skills. It had often been a family-wide sacrifice to keep her in therapy (six hours per week at first, now about two hours per week). Although many people think she doesn't need that support, we feel it is imperative to her continued growth. Cheyenne has experienced great success using her cochlear implant, but at first the steps were very small ones.

The Clarion cochlear implant changed our daughter's life. There is no doubt in my mind that without it she still would have been successful because by nature she is a determined child. But the implant has made that road much easier for her. She has so many opportunities now that she would not have had. A world of hearing people has been opened for her. She lives in a world that she can experience now with all of her senses. Her life is fuller, richer, more complete.