Kacey Brown

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.

Kacey was born on July 11, 1999. She was a beautiful, healthy baby girl with no apparent health problems or issues. She was an extremely good baby, very animated and smiled often. Kacey, however, was a quiet baby. She didn't make a lot of verbal noise and she didn't appear to turn to sound. Because Kacey was my husband's and my first child, we did not notice or recognize that anything was amiss. However, Kacey's grandfather, a physician, took notice of her quiet nature, and mentioned at 10 months that he was concerned about Kacey's hearing.

We went to have Kacey's hearing tested and we were actually more concerned with the sedation process required for the BEAR testing than we were with the possible outcome. We felt sure that she could hear and life would continue as normal. Our jaws, however, hit the floor when the audiologist shared the following news: Kacey, our 11 month-old precious baby, had severe to profound hearing loss. I immediately burst into tears and my husband sat there in complete shock. I could not believe that my daughter had never heard my voice; had never heard me say "I love you" or had never heard me softly tell her it was okay when she was crying or upset. Right on the heals of sharing this news, the audiologist shared with us that children implanted early with something called a cochlear implant were having phenomenal results. We were given cochlear implant literature that we immediately took home and devoured. We realized quickly that if we wanted Kacey to have the same opportunity in this world as her hearing peers, we needed to do whatever necessary to get Kacey this technology.

After trying hearing aids unsuccessfully for a few months, Kacey was implanted with the Advanced Bionics Clarion HiFocus array with the Platinum processor at the age of 17 months. I can honestly say our entire world changed after Kacey's activation. Kacey said her first word ("more") within 3 weeks of activation, and steadily, with a lot of hard work, she gained more and more vocabulary both receptively and expressively. She is now 5 years old, and talks non-stop. She loves music and watching her favorite shows. She is the same happy, animated little girl she was prior to implantation; she just has the ability now to express herself with words rather than just her eyes and delightful smile.

Coupled with auditory verbal therapy three times per week, Kacey has gone to mainstreamed preschool since day one, and she will start kindergarten at our local elementary school next year. She uses a personal FM system in class, which has greatly improved her ability to perform well in a noisy classroom.

The sky is the limit for Kacey, and we have every reason to believe she will be able to lead, become, and enjoy any type of life she creates for herself. We couldn't be any more proud of her and her achievements. We look forward to helping any families traveling down a similar road… please know there is hope and that our children, coupled with this technology, can live extraordinary lives!