Sandy Mintz

44 year old female Hearing impaired since age 6; cause unknown; hearing aid user for 27 years Profound hearing loss for about 6 years prior to implantation Implanted at age 43

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.

I never dreamed it would get to this point. At age 6, when my hearing loss began, my parents never thought I would need hearing aids. But my hearing loss progressed. At age 10, I needed hearing aids but nobody told us that. At age 15, I was offered hearing aids, but refused to use them. At age 17, as my hearing continued to worsen, I decided it was time, and got my first hearing aid. I never thought hearing aids could change my life and my outlook on life so dramatically. I enjoyed enhanced hearing with hearing aids for many years, but my hearing continued to slip away and I was slowly being stripped of the auditory capabilities I had gained.

In college, my career path became obvious, I would become an audiologist. I wanted to help other people like myself. Some people never dreamed I, as a hearing impaired person, could make it as an audiologist. But I did, and I've done it well for 20 years, despite my failing hearing. I don't know what caused my hearing loss, nor what caused it to fluctuate and progress so much over the years. As an audiologist, I had access to all the best hearing aids, and for a long time, I functioned extremely well given the demands on my hearing as a clinical audiologist and university professor with my severe degree of hearing loss. Even after my hearing loss hit the profound range about 6 years ago, I thought I was doing amazingly well, better than could be expected for someone with such little residual hearing. I never thought I could do better if I had a cochlear implant.

My auditory capabilities continued to decline little by little. My hearing became a supplement to my speechreading. I relied on vision to communicate, but needed some auditory input to do so, which I got from my hearing aids. My hearing aids enabled me to detect a lot of sound, but did not allow me to understand speech. I lost the ability to use the voice telephone, I lost the ability to follow a conversation with my family or friends around the dinner table, I was struggling more often in seemingly simple one-to-one conversations, I was totally lost in noise, and I lost any communicative and social confidence I may have had. I was withdrawing from the people around me, because it was easier to endure the isolation than the tension and frustration of trying to communicate. I never thought it would get to this point.

I knew about cochlear implants my entire audiology career. When a colleague suggested about four years ago that I consider cochlear implantation, I was devastated and hurt that she would propose such a thing to me. I still considered myself a hard of hearing person, not a deaf individual, so cochlear implantation never entered my mind. "But I still get plenty of benefit from hearing aids" I exclaimed. "At best, I'm a borderline candidate for a cochlear implant." "No way would I take that kind of risk with my hearing….what if I lost it…how would I function with just one ear that had little to no hearing?" Despite my long audiology career, I did not work directly with cochlear implant patients. Although I read the research literature, I never thought so many cochlear implant users truly functioned better than I did with my hearing aids.

It was a three-year decision making process for me. After continued struggles, aggravation, and isolation, I finally came to grips with my ultimatum. I had to do something about my hearing. I needed to either find a way to remain auditory, or become fluent in sign language and reassess my social and vocational situation. I figured I might as well try cochlear implantation because if that failed to improve my hearing abilities, the second option would still be open to me. So I finally decided to undergo formal cochlear implant evaluation, still fully expecting to find myself to be a borderline candidate. I never thought I would be deemed a good candidate for an implant, but I was.

When I told my parents about my decision, my father was gung ho about the whole thing, but my mother was extremely skeptical. "What if something better comes along in a year or two, would you be able to use it?" "Maybe it's best to wait," she said. I had to convince my mom that I had to do something NOW; I could not wait any longer as my happiness was fading away.

So then came the difficult task of selecting the type of implant to receive. Here I am, an experienced audiologist, and I never thought this could be such a difficult decision! I had access to all the medical literature, and the expertise to read and interpret the findings. I had a lot of audiology colleagues in the implant community from whom I could tap opinions. I knew several people using cochlear implants. My research enabled me to accept that I was "deaf enough" to benefit from cochlear implantation and I learned that I would not go wrong with any of the currently available implant devices. I truly felt for other hearing impaired individuals and families who might be in my same position, because if it was this difficult for me, an experienced audiologist, to make such a decision, just imagine how difficult it could be for others.

My research and my gut feeling told me the most important thing was that my implant should be the most sophisticated one on the current market, and not become obsolete in a year or two. For that reason, I chose to get the Advanced Bionics HiRes 90k cochlear implant. It seemed to clearly be the most technologically advanced device available, and it seemed to set me up for the future so that I would have access to future developments in speech processing through software programming that would be compatible with the same internal device. This allowed me to enter the process with confidence that I was doing the right thing.

That's not to say I didn't second guess the entire cochlear implant decision several times prior to surgery. Emotions can be very cyclical. I wished I had a better prediction of expected outcomes. I already had pretty good detection thresholds. I could already hear, with powerful hearing aids, the birds, crinkling paper, and all sorts of environmental sounds. I thought I already had a reasonably large range of speech sounds in my auditory repertoire and as long as I could read lips, I could converse reasonably well. I kept my expectations for the implant low-I had to reduce the chance of disappointment.

Surgery was January 20th; all went well. I did get a little nauseous and dizzy in the recovery room, but it didn't last long. I had some moderate pain and discomfort for a few days, but it was considerably less than I anticipated. It's amazing how my life was set up for change in that hour and a half of surgery! Activation was February 3, 2004. The actual hook up was truly an awesome experience for me and my family. The anxiety of whether I'd hear anything at all was calmed with that first tone presentation. "Oh, I hear that"! We all cried! I went through all the loudness judgments with great exhilaration and grew anxious to hear actual voices. But when I did, it was all just beeping sounds and my very first impression when I heard live speech was, "oh my god, I made a terrible mistake!" But I couldn't let on to my audiologist or my family that I had immediate regrets, so I just smiled and held in my emotions. Give it some time, Sandy, I said to myself. I was so thankful that I had kept my expectations as low as they were.

I never thought the brain could adapt so rapidly and spectacularly! I had read about it, but experiencing it first hand is a whole different story! By day two and day three, speech started to materialize. It was still mostly just "doo wop" sounds, and sounded a lot like Charlie Brown's teacher (you know, "wah wah wah"), but somehow my brain was able to start making sense of those sounds and I could interpret it as speech! I did 'hearing workouts' to challenge my brain everyday.

Day three, I could have a conversation with my dad on the telephone! This was the first time I could talk to him on the phone in 20 years! The tears were streaming down both of our faces!

Day four, I realized progress is a roller-coaster ride as I struggled to hear mom and friends on the phone. Day five, I could carry on a conversation in the car while I was driving! Day nine, I had dinner with six in a restaurant and could relax and enjoy the conversation with relative ease!

Day twelve I was able to converse with a neighbor while we were walking our dogs outside in the dark! Yes, I can hear the birds better than before, and music is now wonderfully back into my life, but most importantly, I can understand speech! I never thought speech could be so clear after all these years of hearing loss!

It's been five months now on this journey back to hearing. It happened unusually fast and quite dramatically for me; for that I feel exceptionally lucky, even though I was prepared for it to take many months. I continue my daily hearing workouts and my progress continues to astound me. I quickly returned to being an auditory communicator and can rely much less on my vision. That's not so say I gave up using visual cues -- I just don't have to depend on them so much.

As a post-lingual hearing impaired person, I never realized that as my hearing loss progressed, it had an affect on my speech production. But everyone has told me how my speech has spontaneously improved with the cochlear implant. I have gained so much confidence; now I don't hesitate to strike up a conversation with friends or strangers. It is wonderful to be able to partake in activities without having to first worry about whether or not I would be able to hear, and whether it was worth risking failure. I can now relax and enjoy communicating. I feel I now have more control over the situation and have the confidence to participate and the self esteem to accept whatever comes my way.

It's seemingly miraculous! That's not to say I don't still struggle to hear. I do, and at times I am rudely reminded that I am still hearing impaired. But my expectations have been far exceeded. Tears of joy have replaced tears of sadness. Tears of laughter have replaced tears of isolation. Tears of optimism have replaced tears of fear. I never dreamed it would get to this point!