Sarah

My name is Sarah J. and I am nineteen years old. I was implanted with a MED-EL cochlear implant in December of 1999 and was hooked up to it in January of 2000. For nearly seventeen years, I depended heavily on my hearing aids and lip reading. Throughout my life, I have heard of cochlear implants and have heard many stories about its advantages and disadvantages. It was not until I was seventeen years old with a severe profound hearing loss that I decided to look into it.

I was born on January 13, 1982 in Washington D.C. All the doctors thought I was fine. However, my parents realized I could not hear, so they took me to every doctor in New York. All of them told my parents I was fine and that I was just slow. When we moved to Connecticut, an audiologist walked by me one day and told my parents I was deaf. I was two years old then. For the next five years I learned how to sign, went to a deaf pre-school and went to the long speech sessions twice a day. Along the way my parents decided it would be best if I could communicate in the hearing world. We choose to drop sign and just use oral as our way to communicate. I started wearing hearing aids to help me communicate in the hearing world. Then my parents decided to move to Georgia and to place me into a public elementary school.

My senior year in high school, my best friend's sister was implanted with a cochlear implant and I was continuously amazed by how much more she could hear each day. It was then I decided to look into it. I was surprised to see how much they have improved in only the last couple years. My parents and I went to go see my audiologist and my surgeon about the procedures of the surgery and the implants that are available. They were able to give me a choice between three different implants. I picked MED-EL because every time we called their office with a question, their staff was very helpful and very nice. MED-EL also offered more programs than the other implants and seemed to be further in its technology than any other implant.

It has been a little more than a year now that I have been hooked up to my implant and I am still fascinated by the whole process. I am a freshman at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and I would not be able to take the auditorium classes offered here if it was not for my implant. Some new sounds I am able to hear now are the hum of the refrigerator, the clock ticking, water running, telephone ringing, and even birds chirping. This implant has greatly influenced my life and I love learning new sounds each day and I would encourage anyone eager to hear again to get a MED-EL cochlear implant.

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