Paul

My name is Paul, I am 47 years old. Sometime in my mid 20's I started losing my hearing. It was a rather sudden loss and it started in one ear. I went for many tests and was finally told that I had nerve damage and to get a hearing aid. I did get an aid, and eventually had to get one for the other side so I had a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. I used to work on wallstreet as a commodities broker but my hearing loss forced me out of the trading pit. As my hearing loss progressed I changed hearing aids at least 4 times, each time I would get a new one I thought that I would understand voices better, but in reality it never really made much of a difference. I began to depend more and more on friends and family to help me out with phone calls to telling me what a conversation was about. At work my co-workers and customers really struggled to communicate with me. It was a very frustrating time. At home I had to watch TV in caption to understand what was going on and I could never go to a movie and be able to understand the talking. I tried assistive listening devices but they didn't work for me either. I also coach the high school varsity soccer team. I never heard the referee's whistles and my kids really had to get in my face to be able to understand them.

This past April of 2000 I woke up one morning to total deafness in my left ear. I thought it was the hearing aid giving me problems but my audiologist told me it was not the hearing aid but that I had lost a lot of my hearing in both ears, I was really devastated, I really began to think that I needed to learn sign language as I thought I would soon be facing the world totally deaf. My audiologist mentioned that he thought I might be a candidate for a cochlear implant and I had him give me a referral. In the early part of May I went to Charlotte Ear Nose and Throat for an evaluation and was found to be an excellent candidate for an implant. I immediately told them I wanted to do it. I was given literature for 3 different brands of devices. I read all of them and was very impressed, I don't think I could have made a bad choice, but I decided on the MED-EL COMBI 40 + . I was really impressed with the electronics and the speed rate, and the concept of pairing the electrodes made a lot of sense to me.

I was implanted the end of July and was hooked up 3 weeks later. I immediately was able to make out voices or should I say language. There were 3 people in the room carrying on a conversation and I was able to understand it.

Since my initial hookup which was 5 months ago at this writing my life has changed completely. I call it my miracle. My wife can talk to me from different rooms, I use the phone all the time, I even carry a cell phone and have no problem understanding anybody. I pick up the phone at work and take customer orders. My speech has gotten better, I no longer need closed caption on TV. I can go to the movies and understand what is being said. I go to stores and shop by myself. I can understand the lyrics to songs that I have listened to for years and never understood. I feel my confidence is better than it was before the implant, but I think the biggest thing I have learned is how much my hearing loss affected those around me. The sacrifices that people had to make for me, particularly my wife Karen. She has been my ears for at least the past 5 years and a comment that she made a few weeks after the hookup really stood out, she said that the CI would save her a 150 miles per year on her legs not having to come get me anymore.

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