Bernhard

Imagine this: you are having dinner with your family, your children have just come home from school and are telling you about their day at school. Your wife asks you to pass the salad - you do not respond. Your daughter asks you for help with her math homework - you do not answer. Your son asks you if he can stay at a friend's house overnight -you say (because you only understood the word "night"): "Oh, you're going to bed early tonight." And then the conversation just stops.
A horrific scene? Certainly. And yet these are everyday problems for families with deaf or nearly deaf persons. Even if you really try to pay attention, you just cannot concentrate enough after a day's work to read your wife's lips or follow the conversation at the dinner table. I often think about similar situations that happened in our family.

I am now 48 years old and have been a secondary school teacher in Neu-Ulm in Bavaria for almost 25 years. I teach primarily 7th to 9th graders and still work full-time - thanks to my bilateral CI's.
My deafness in both ears was caused by otosclerosis. For more than 20 years I used two hearing aids which helped me hear despite continuous deterioration of my hearing. I always had problems in the noisy environment at school. By 1997, my residual hearing had become so poor that even the strongest hearing aids could hardly help me hear anything. It became clear to me that I would have to retire from my job at the end of the school year, although my job was almost as important to me as my family! But I had simply reached my physical and psychological limits.

By chance, I heard that cochlear implantations were being performed at the University Hospital in Würzburg. After going through the usual initial assessments, I received the MED-EL "COMBI 40+" CI. The surgery was performed by Prof. Dr. J. Helms and Dr. J. Müller in June 1998.

I had to wait a long 6 weeks for the first fitting of the processor. After all the adjustments and scaling of loudness levels was completed - which seemed to me to last an eternity - the processor was switched on for the first time. I cannot remember now whether I was able to suppress my disappointment: while I was able to hear rather well and talk to the technician, the sound of his and my voice was so strange that I felt I was hearing computer voices.
I could not distinguish any melody in sentences, no accentuation, I was not even sure if I heard a male or a female voice, there was simply no difference! When I went home that evening, I did not know whether to rejoice or cry.

During dinner, all my family wanted to know was what I was hearing. Everybody tried to speak softly and not yell as they had done for years. I understood my wife's asking for the butter without having to ask again, and I could even answer my children's many questions without having them repeat everything. What was that sound? They told me I had just heard a train go by some distance from our home. And during the few short pauses in the conversation, I even thought I heard the ticking of our clock on the wall. Now I realized: I had every reason to rejoice!

The success was absolutely staggering! On that same evening I went outside to discover the world of sound: the birds were singing, a dog barked, the door of a car was slammed shut, the noise of closing shutters, etc., etc., etc.. How long had it been since I had heard all these sounds? In the meantime, things had quieted down in the house. The children were in bed, and I could hear them laughing all the way from the living room! I even managed to understand a few sentences from the late-night news on television! The next day my wife had me call friends and relatives on the phone. Of course, everybody wanted to know how much I could hear. When they spoke slowly, I was able to understand most of what they said. Each new day brought scores of new hearing sensations. After a relatively short time I could even differentiate between male and female voices, whether the voice sounded happy or sad, and I even heard intonations and accentuations in sentences.

After four weeks of getting used to hearing with the CI during the summer break, I started teaching a new class in September 1998!
But no matter how well I did with my newly acquired hearing ability, I soon realized that I would not be able to continue all those years until reaching retirement age. The problems were too great with a lot of background noise as well as my lack of directional hearing. Naturally, these abilities are all necessary for effective teaching. This was one of the reasons Dr. Müller from the University Hospital in Würzburg suggested a second CI. Moreover, due to otosclerosis, the condition of my inner ear had deteriorated to such a degree that it might have been impossible to implant this ear had I waited too long. I received my second implant in July 1999, another MED-EL "COMBI 40+".

Although I knew about the process from my first surgery, I again impatiently awaited the fitting of the second processor. What would it be like to hear with both ears? Would I really be able to hear better? Would I be able to hear which direction the sounds came from? Would my daily work become easier? A thousand questions - and I had to wait 6 weeks to answer them.

I have now been teaching using both CI’s for almost two school years. One year I taught an 8th grade class with 31 (!) students. Only on rare occasions do I have to ask someone to repeat something. And, unfortunately for my students, I can tell exactly where wisecrack remarks come from. I remove my new "TEMPO+" pro-cessors only when I absolutely have to, when I come into contact with water or when I go to bed. The processors are a real advancement compared to bodyworn processors, not only because there are no more cables, but it also because they provide considerably more detailed hearing sensations. Every morning when I put them on, I realize how much richer my world has become. I still have every reason to rejoice because I can hear! Even after two years of "CI-hearing" it still surprises me that I can hear so much, and sometimes I suddenly hear a sound I didn’t know or realize I could hear.

My world has truly become richer. Richer in terms of the people I can approach and no longer have to avoid because it is almost impossible for a normally hearing person to communicate with someone deaf for a longer period of time. Richer because I am able to experience the world as it is: a world full of sounds. Richer because I can lead a normal life, work in my profession, play sports, and enjoy my hobbies despite my hearing problem. And richer because I can do all the little things myself without asking others for help.

Many things have changed in my life over the past two years - maybe even myself. On occasion, I spend some of my spare time participating in various tests, and I do so for a good reason. Perhaps this is a way for me to contribute to future improvements of CI technology so that others can hear as well as I can.

Many more user stories are available on the HearPeers.com. Please be sure to check it out!