Bill Sarcino
The following story is one person's experience with a cochlear implant. Your experience may be very different. Success with a cochlear implant is influenced by many factors including how long a person has had hearing loss, the age a person receives an implant, medical and anatomical factors and more. Please consult your cochlear implant professional and/or the Bionic Ear Association with questions.
Business consultant and political pundit Bill Saracino of Los Angeles had perfect hearing up until the age of 48. Then he lost his hearing, bam, just like that. He got it back after a year of dwelling in silence, thanks to the receipt of an Advanced Bionics cochlear implant. He says this about the onset of deafness and what he did in response.
“I woke up one morning with what I thought was just a severe head cold that had plugged up my ears. Three hours later, I knew this was something far worse—by then, my hearing was completely gone.
“For a time, I was convinced that life as I knew it was over for me. I had visions of having to give up my career and spend the rest of my days in a rocking chair on the porch of a convalescent home, whittling a piece of wood for entertainment. I had never before even considered what it would be like to live with a disability like deafness.
“I turned to the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles for help. They put me on steroids for about eight weeks to see if my hearing would be restored on its own. I asked my doctor, what if the medicine doesn’t help? He told me, ‘Bill, one way or the other, you will hear again, if not with the help of the steroids, then with the aid of a cochlear implant.’
“Well, the steroid treatment didn’t work. That left the cochlear implant option. I took it. It was a no-brainer. Given the choice of regaining my hearing, if even imperfectly, or living life as a deaf person, I knew which way I needed to go. I went ahead and got the implant and was able to hear again.
“The bottom line is that, today, a person like me doesn’t have to be deaf if he or she doesn’t want to be. My deafness has been conquered through technology—the technology of the cochlear implant.”
(Interview by Rich Smith)
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