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.

Logan was diagnosed with a mild hearing loss in July of 2001. She had great speech and fooled us for an unknown period of time. Her Junior Kindergarten teacher first made us aware that there was a problem. Logan was not getting her letter sounds at school, and appeared to be not hearing well in class. We took her to our family doctor who than sent us to an ENT. Logan's speech was so good that the audiologist tested her twice over a period of a couple of weeks, thinking that she just had fluid in her ears.

After the initial tests we were sent to a clinic where we learned that she had a mild hearing loss in both ears and would need to be fitted with two hearing aids. Over the course of the next year-and-a-half she lost more hearing at a fairly fast rate. We tried a steroid drug to try and bring it back but that did not help.

After one particular visit to the audiology clinic, I was introduced to the lead cochlear implant audiologist. She discussed the possibility of a cochlear implant for Logan. It was a very emotional visit for me but looking back it was the best decision we made for our child. The main reason we wanted Logan to have the implant as quickly as possible was because she did have her speech and we did not want her to lose it, which was beginning to happen due to her now profound hearing loss. She was doing well in school and we wanted her to continue to do well. She was beginning to have issues at school socially due to her lack of hearing and we wanted to help her solve this as well.

Prior to surgery Logan was struggling with school and sports because the hearing aids were just not giving her sufficient amplification. She could not talk on the phone which was hard on her because she would see her sisters talking to their grandparents and other relatives and she could not use the phone at all. My biggest worry was that she would not learn to read before her hearing was completely gone. To my relief she is an avid reader who is reading at her grade level and above.

For the next few months we made several trips to the cochlear implant doctor and center preparing for her surgery on June 5, 2003. The surgery lasted about 5 hours, after she was out of the OR we were allowed to see her in the recovery room. I spent the next two nights with her in her room. Her head was wrapped in a big gauze bandage, which was removed before we went home. She then wore a small bandage over the incision for a couple of weeks.

The big day occurred on July 3rd, less than four weeks after the surgery. Logan was turned on. Prior to surgery her PB-K words were 8% and Phonemes were 42%. One month post CI she was 36% and 72%. She has had a steady increase and just recently had her one-year evaluation. I am very pleased to say she is now at 92% and 98%.

Logan is doing very well in school with minimal support in the classroom and has two one-hour visits a week with an Itinerant Teacher for the hearing impaired. Logan is now playing hockey and soccer and is more confident because she can hear the whistles and her coach telling her what to do. She still struggles a bit, but can follow what is happening just by watching her teammates.

I feel that Advanced Bionics and Logan's cochlear implant have changed her life and our lives dramatically. Since her implant, I have become a member of the Bionic Ear Association (BEA; a support division of Advanced Bionics), Logan has made many new friends at school as well as within our chapter of VOICE and also the VOICE chapters across Ontario. I have passed along information to a few people who have hearing loss and don't really realize that there are options for them. I feel that the CI has opened up a whole new world for Logan that she would not have realized otherwise. She has the confidence to do anything and I am sure she will achieve anything she sets her mind to.