About Hearing Implants

Posted on | February 23, 2008 |

On Wednesday, I volunteered for Cochlear Americas. I don’t believe I’ve talked about this on the blog before, so let me give you some history.

I’ve mentioned in the past that I have a chronic illness called Auto-Immune Inner Ear Disease. I’ve talked about the vertigo and the treatment I’ve had; however, on my 21st birthday, I woke up deaf in my left ear. Sensorineural Hearing Loss is a potential effect of both the treatments I was doing at the time and the disease itself. I was in my senior year of college and I had struggled with intermittent hearing loss. There was nothing they could do for me until I lost the hearing completely in the left ear. I was hooked up with the State Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. They got me all the things I needed to succeed in my classes, including a CROS hearing aid. They helped me to advocate for myself, and I graduated with honors. For a long time I struggled with my hearing impairment. You’d think that being deaf in one ear was really not that big of a deal with good hearing in the other ear. However, it can be very difficult.

When you have unilateral hearing loss, there are several problems, including the fact that you cannot hear in a loud room, you can feel isolated, you don’t hear in stereo, and you cannot localize sound. I have been to trade shows where I have heard someone call my name, but I had no idea where it was from. Imagine the sound is coming from the left and you (a) don’t hear anything; (b) think they’re talking to someone else because it sounds far away; or (c) turn to the right! When you hear in just one ear, everything sounds like it’s coming from that same side. And people think you’re ignoring them if they call and you don’t respond! Not a good thing when your business is communication, which mine was!

For many years, I wore a CROS Aid. Or rather, wore it and turned it off most of the time. It was very annoying to hear the conversations behind me better than the conversation at our table at dinner. So, I turned it off. But I had to strategically sit so I could hear and read lips. This was the only thing available for me for over 15 years. And, convinced I had no other option, I used it and I worked ten times harder than a hearing person to catch what was going on right in front of me. It was exhausting and stressful. But for many years, it was all I knew.

Then, in 2004, I went in for my semi-annual hearing and vertigo evaluation. At the time, my vertigo was well-managed, but my CROS Aid was pretty useless to me. I had very stable hearing in my right ear, and the audiologist and the Ear Nose and Throat doctor (ENT) suggested I look at the Baha Implant. I was leery. I had never heard of this, and it had apparently just been approved by the FDA for unilateral hearing loss. I figured nothing ventured, nothing gained, and I went and tried the product.

The Baha is a device that sends the sound to your good ear by using the skull to conduct the sound to the good ear. They were able to allow me to experience what it was like there in the office. They gave me a pressure head band and the processor was attached to it. Immediately upon turning it on, I heard a whisper behind me. I had tears in my eyes. We went for a walk through the corridor. For the FIRST time in over 15 years, I heard someone whisper on my left side; I heard people’s footsteps behind me; I could tell, in general, where the sound was coming from. I was sold. Two months later, I went and had the outpatient procedure to have the titanium abutment seated. Titanium has the property of being able to integrate into the bone through a process called osseointegration. This process takes three months for an adult and I could not wait to get my processor. I got my processor in August 2004. I was the first person in Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO to have the Baha implant.

I have been volunteering to speak to groups and individuals on and off for a few years as a result of this. Patients with unilateral hearing loss have called me and emailed me about the Baha and I’ve answered questions for them. For the most part, this has been through my neurotologists (ENT focusing on hearing and the hearing nerves), who have asked me to speak with people. However, Cochlear Americas has recently added Baha Volunteers to their Cochlear Awareness Network. I’ve become the first Baha volunteer in Arizona the past two weeks.

So, on Wednesday, I attended the Arizona Disabilities Expo, an opportunity for people with disabilities and those who work with people with disabilities to learn about assistive devices and supportive options. It’s rewarding work to see someone who has been told forever that there is nothing that can be done for them and they’re completely deaf in one ear or deaf in both. Cochlear Americas also manufactures the Cochlear Implant (CI) called the Nucleus Freedom. I will be learning more about this product, but there are a bunch of Cochlear Awareness Network volunteers who use the CI.

In short, this is just something I needed to share with you. If you or anyone you know wears hearing aids, a CROS Aid or has been told that there is nothing that can be done for their hearing impairment, I urge you to have them contact me or Cochlear directly.  If you have questions, please leave them on my blog or email me and I will be happy to answer them!

Have a fabulous day!

Comments