Bobby Fowler

73 year-old male Hereditary and noise-induced hearing loss, progressive with adult onset Severe-profound loss for 10 years prior to implantation Implanted at age 69

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.

The story of my hearing loss began back with my mother's family. I do not know how far back this went, but I know that my grandfather was hard of hearing. This hereditary hearing loss was passed on down to my mother, which was passed on to five of her children. I first noticed my hearing decline around 1958. It was early 1959 before I tried a hearing aid. It helped but was not comfortable to wear. Part of my hearing loss came from being around jet engines on jet aircraft during my air force days. Often times they were run up at full blast with no hearing protection worn. From that time on my hearing gradually went down and each time the hearing clinics would say we have to go to a stronger aid. This continued until it got to where I was no longer able to understand or carry on a conversation and know what was said by the other person. This was around 1994 that I no longer wanted to be around groups of people, because I did not know what they were talking about. It was a frustrating time of my life, because all I could get out of any visit to a hearing aid facility was, "try a new hearing aid; this is all we can do for you." At no time during these visits did any one ever mention that there were other options such as cochlear implantation.

My wife saw an ad in a magazine for Advanced Bionics with a website listed for more information. I was fascinated with the technology and found from the website a clinic near me that dealt with cochlear implants. I went to the clinic and the audiologist found that my hearing loss was in the range that qualified me for a cochlear implant. There was also room in the clinical trial for the HiRes sound processing program at the time and I was selected to participate in that. I had surgery in November 2001, everything went well, and in December I got my Christmas present as I was "turned on" and could hear again!

Because I was in the HiRes trial, I first started out with an older processing strategy that I used temporarily. After several visits with the audiologist and practice with my implant things just kept getting better and better. A few months later it was time to switch to the HiRes processing. Hearing this change I can only describe as like living on the 4th floor of a high rise building and moving to the penthouse! There was such a dramatic change! Although I was happy with how I was hearing with the older strategy compared to hearing aids, HiRes just made everything even better and there was no way that I wanted to go back to the other strategy. In 2002, I visited the cochlear implant manufacturing plant in Sylmar, CA. It was a wonderful visit to be able to see what is behind all of this wonderful technology. Thanks to a wonderful team of people at Advanced Bionics.