The Abnormal Life of a Deaf Person

2nd Birthday

August 13, 2003

It was my second birthday today and I still couldn't hear. I had lived two whole years not hearing anything, and I didn't know any different. 

Yes, I had worn hearing aids, but I was completely deaf, so there was like 10% chance they'd work efficiently on me. Not all devices work on everyone. Some people can do just fine with only hearing aids, but some people need something a little stronger, like me. I needed a cochlear implant if I wanted to be able to hear as much as possible. 

I had gotten the surgery for the cochlear implant on my right side of my head yesterday, but it was a long road of recovery before I could even be able to put the implant on and program it. The surgeons had shaved the whole side of my head (like the trend in 2016-17 that people did), and looking back at photos, I looked pretty badass in those pictures as a baby. 

They opened up my skin on my head and placed a magnet onto my skull and it had some wires that attached to my cochlea that would stimulate when receiving sound from the microphone of the connected external device. Then I was stapled back up and bandaged for a few months. 

Soon I was able to get the staples removed and surprisingly I didn't cry. Imagine that! You are a little girl getting staples removed. How I was not screaming my lungs out, I don't even know. 

Anyways, there's a huge, permanent scar now. It looks like a giant question mark and it can be pretty visible if my hair's parted a certain way. 

~~~~~~~~ A few months later

I was at my first audiology appointment for my Body Worn processor. It was a little rectangle that would strap to my body like those child leashes and there was a wire connected from the body part to a small part on my ear to a magnet that would attach to my head. The reason I didn't have a normal implant yet was because I was 2 and my ears were small. A normal implant would've fallen right off, so at that age until about 5 years old, I wore a body worn cochlear implant. 

At that first audiology appointment, nothing drastic happened. The audiologist, Mrs. Theresa gave my parents the box they ordered online from the options of which processor to buy, for them to see what it looked like before beginning to program it to me. 

I didn't automatically get it turned on and hear everything crystal clear. I did however know how to express myself through sign a little, so she would sign and ask me how things felt and I would reply with a good, a head shake, etc. 

Eventually something clicked. Something changed. I heard a fuzz. I heard fuzzy noises and I didn't know why. I looked around the room at my parents and Mrs. Theresa. I had a bewildered look on my face because I had no idea what was going on. 

I'd turn back around to the toys I was playing with, still hooked up to the computer, and I heard yet another weird noise. I turned back around and looked at all of them. 

I'd come to find out that they were calling me as a test to see if the programs were suitable for me, and apparently they were. I may not have known exactly what they were saying, but I definitely heard something. And that was all that needed to be accomplished that day. 

 "Ok, so I need y'all to come back every 3 months or so, so that I can check up on her and change her levels if need be." 

From the moment I'd wake up, my parents would put my processor on me until I went to sleep. Throughout the day, I'd practice listening to sounds and practice mimicking things my mother'd say to me. I'd also go to speech therapy twice a week to learn signs as well and do the same thing, but Mrs. Suzette was a trained professional, so she did a better job than my mom, getting me to learn. 

Everyone else's lives would go on. 

Nate would go to school and do boy scouts.

My father would go to work. 

Molly would go to school and have dance class and go to 4-H. 

I would go to the park and stay home alone with my mother doing speech therapy. We did go out, but it was rare.