If you are like the many thousands of others already using an Advanced Bionics cochlear implant, it is possible your world will be very different from the one you now know once the device is implanted.
That’s because cochlear implant technology is intended to let you step back into—or step into for the very first time ever—the world of hearing, where lush, deep-hued, rising, cresting, enfolding tones of sound abound. Hearing is an amazing thing to experience. Especially after it has once been lost and then brought back. Some would go so far as to call regained auditory capacity a “gift,” with value beyond measure.
Financial industry consultant Jim Alsup certainly would agree with that. His main motivation for wanting a cochlear implant was to be able to have better relationships with the people most important to him.
“I realized that everything I wanted to do and be in this life required the ability to hear,” says the 36-year-old Leawood, Kansas, man who received his first implant in 2004 (the second, for his other ear, he received in 2006). “I could, as a deaf person, be a good father to my daughter Maggie, but I could not have the level of interaction with her, the quality of experiences, that would be possible as a father with the ability to hear.
“And now, because I can hear, I can take Maggie to the movies and enjoy it right along with her, then talk about it afterwards when we stop for ice cream on the way home.”
Doug Roberts finds things going well now for him too since being implanted in 2001. “I think I connect with people much better now,” says the 63-year-old retired electrical engineer who lives just outside Salt Lake City. “During the time that my hearing was lost, I withdrew from people, and that wasn’t healthy. Now I feel connected to those in my orbit.”
Above all, he says he cherishes the freshly kindled intimacy he shares again with his wife Carolyn as they engage in pillow-talk, something that wasn’t possible before. He also enjoys having heart-to-heart conversations with his children and grandchildren. “I recall the time not long ago that I was out driving around with my daughter, and there she was, freely confiding to me the story of how she met and fell in love with the young man who later would become her husband—and there I was, able to catch every word of it.”
One of the many wonderful aspects of a cochlear implant is that it makes chatting by telephone easy and comfortable. Some users find they hear phone conversations better and more naturally by putting the caller on speaker. For others, it works better to use an accessory called the T-Mic® Microphone, an in-the-ear microphone that picks up the sound from the phone’s handset without need for connecting cables between the phone and the cochlear implant’s processor.
Thanks to his cochlear implant, Los Angeles business consultant and political pundit Bill Saracino enjoys a life that today is little different from what it was before he lost his hearing at age 48. “When people learn I’m using a cochlear implant, the first thing they want to know is what percentage of my hearing has been restored,” he says. “I answer by telling them it depends on the circumstance. In a quiet room where it’s just me and one other person talking, it’s as though 100% of my hearing has been restored. If I’m in a restaurant full of people and a band is playing in the background, then my restored hearing is less, due to the environmental conditions.”
Bill adds that he was surprised by all that he could hear once the implant was activated and mapped by the audiologist a few weeks after the surgery. “The very first sounds I heard were environmental sounds—the sounds of birds chirping, cars driving down the street, the wind blowing, that sort of thing. I was delighted to be able to hear anything at all.
“However, people at first sounded not like how I remembered them sounding. Women’s voices, because they have a higher frequency pitch, sounded like Donald Duck on helium. Men’s voices, lower in pitch, sounded fuzzy, sort of like what you get when you’re listening to a radio station that isn’t quite tuned in. But each time I went back to the audiologist for additional remapping, the clarity of people’s voices got better and better.
“Still, I have to admit I was overwhelmed by the way the implant has worked for me.”
Music—letting its sumptuous strains, lilting melodies, or pulsing beat saturate the mind and stimulate the soul—is an indisputable joy of life. But it is a delight possible only for those with hearing ability.
“The music I enjoyed before my progressive hearing loss is music I can now enjoy again,” says Doug. “I especially enjoy percussion performances, like those done by the group Stomp. I’ve been to a few concerts and I enjoy trying to pick out which instrument is making a particular sound. Flutes are especially wonderful to my ears. Even bagpipes sound good.”
In contrast, Jim takes his music straight up, just they way it pours out of his CD player’s speakers. “Songs that I knew from before I lost my hearing are the ones that sound best to me,” he says. “
Some people worry that the cochlear implant they receive today will be obsolete next week. That was a concern on Doug’s mind, to be sure. But a reason he chose The HiResolution Bionic Ear System was because he recognized that his cochlear implant was designed to keep pace with the march of scientific progress.
“I can very easily upgrade my system without having to go back in for surgery,” he says. “In fact, I’ve already upgraded once—a while back I went from an eight-channel processor to a newer, more powerful 16-channel type. I simply handed my audiologist the old processor, and they gave me the new one in exchange, along with new mapping.”
Jim hasn’t yet upgraded his system. He currently is using Advanced Bionics’ state-of-the-art HiResolution® Sound Processing. And now, the HiRes Fidelity 120™ sound processing is available. “I had the privilege of trying out a [HiRes] 120 pre-production version as part of a small trial a short time ago, and it’s just amazing. It let me hear even better than ever in crowded environments, and the sound quality was so much crisper. I’m going to [upgrade] to it as soon as I can.”
Doug also elected to go with The HiResolution Bionic Ear System because of the comfortable fit of the implant’s earpiece. It’s so comfortable that he forgets he is wearing it. Doug recalls, “There was the time in the winter that I dropped the earpiece in the parking lot at work and couldn’t find it. About two weeks later, I discovered it partially buried in melting wet snow and ice. I could tell that cars had run over it a few times. I took it home and dried it out to see if it would still work. It did, and I’m still using it to this day.”
Another factor in Bill’s choice was the company’s sponsorship of the Bionic Ear Association (BEA), of which he became a member. “The BEA is an important organization for folks who are considering the cochlear implant option but first want to learn as much as possible about the devices,” he says. “I remember how the BEA helped me. In 1998, when I lost my hearing, I was not sure what to do about it, and was more than a little bit panicked. Through the BEA, I met cochlear implant users who were friendly and very willing to share with me their experiences.”
Reflecting back on his journey to sound, Jim finds it hard to believe how far he traveled to arrive at this happy destination.
He also found it hard to believe that regaining his ability to hear was not the conclusion of his journey to sound. There still lay ahead lots of work to train his brain to be able to correctly interpret the sound signals being directed into it through the cochlear implant. “The more I work at listening, the better and more intuitively I’m able to hear, my audiologist told me,” he says. “So, in actuality, this isn’t where the road ends. In many ways, this is where it starts.”
Just like the life you may be able to have in the world of hearing once you receive a cochlear implant—it’s only the beginning.
The opinions and experiences expressed in these stories solely reflect those of the recipients interviewed. Results and experiences with the Advanced Bionics HiResolution Bionic Ear System will vary.
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