Real Life Stories

Real Stories. Real Recipients.

The Time Has Finally Come
Now it is time for you to receive your cochlear implant. This involves a surgery in which the small electrode array of the device will be permanently and very precisely placed near the auditory nerve in your inner ear.

Many who have already been implanted will tell you that the surgery is the smoothest stretch of the road leading to the world of hearing. They will also tell you that the weeks after surgery—the 21 to 30 days leading up to the moment when the implant is at last activated—can seem to go by at a snail’s pace. That’s perfectly understandable given what it is that awaits: the beginning of a life overflowing with sound.

There will be plenty of opportunities for you to meet with your audiologist and the surgery staff for a step-by-step explanation of how the day of surgery will go for you.

Linda M. Binns of San Diego came prepared with a list of questions before her February 2005, surgery: “I wanted to know things like, what kind of anesthesia would be used, and would it be one that could potentially cause problems for me? How much pain would I feel after surgery and for how long? How and when would I know if the surgery was successful? What restrictions will I be on? When can I go back to work?” The answers she received made her feel confident about the surgery she shortly would undergo.

Jaki Scheckter was also confident about his cochlear implant surgery, so much so that the 32-year-old computer consultant and racing enthusiast originally from South Africa, and now living in Florida, could barely wait for the big day. “Most of the clinicians working with me wanted to proceed in a conservative way,” he says. “I understood why. But I’m the kind of person who knows what he wants and goes for it. They wanted to implant just one ear, but I insisted that both ears be done at the same time. And, after we talked about it at length, the audiologist and the surgeon agreed there was no reason not to do it that way in my case.”

The Main Event
You will be asked to arrive for admission to the hospital either the night before surgery or very early in the morning on the day itself.

Doug Roberts, a 63-year-old retired electrical engineer who lives outside Salt Lake City, remembers feeling a little anxious when he checked in at the hospital for his implant surgery that spring day in 2001. “They prepped me and then the anesthesiologist gave me some medicine to relax me,” he says. “The last thing I remember was being rolled on the gurney down the hall toward the operating room. Then I woke up, and it was about two hours later.” Linda says her surgery went just as smoothly—a straightforward, textbook operation is how she describes it. “My audiologist was there in the operating room with me to test the device after it was implanted, while I was still unconscious, to be sure it was working,” she says, adding that everything checked out perfectly.

Most people who receive a cochlear implant experience a fast recovery from the surgery, and many are surprised by how little postoperative pain there is. “By four o’clock that afternoon I was back home again,” says Doug.

Linda, who works as a child support officer in the district attorney’s office, reported virtually no pain at all. “I didn’t take any of the prescription pain medications the hospital sent home with me. I was fine with just over-the-counter ibuprofen.”

By the next morning, Doug was feeling well enough to get up and move around. “I wanted to take a walk around the block, and I’m sure I could easily have done it, but my surgeon told me not to exert myself for a while,” he says.

The only limits the doctor put on Linda were no washing her hair until three days after surgery, and, during the first week, no bending down, no driving a car, and no going to work. That was much the same set of restrictions Jaki was given, with the addition of being warned against traveling aboard high-flying, pressurized-cabin aircraft in the two weeks following the operation.

Returning to work was a big deal for Doug—in his eyes, that signaled things were getting back to normal. “My first day back, I felt sort of apprehensive,” he says. “But then I felt better and happy when I saw how interested and supportive my coworkers were. They all wanted to know if I could hear anything through the implant yet. I had to disappoint them by telling them it wasn’t turned on yet. That was still to come.”

Going Live
Activation of the cochlear implant typically takes place three to five weeks after surgery, depending on how you heal. Then, once it’s turned on, the steady, rich flow of sound to your brain will begin.

In most instances, activation will take place in the office of your audiologist. First to occur will be a computer-controlled test to make sure the cochlear implant is working correctly. Next, the audiologist will create a customized set of program strategies for your implant’s external processor.

This initial session—the process is known as programming—will vary for different cochlear implants centers. It will be followed by somewhat shorter repeat sessions over the course of the next day or two. Another programming session will take place about a week later, then again once a month. The monthly sessions will eventually be spread out to every two months, every three months and, finally, every six months.

Because he had implants in both ears, Jaki’s initial programming session lasted four days. “On the first day, my audiologist programmed the right ear,” he tells. “The initial results were weird. Everything was high-pitched sounding. But on the second day, after further programming of my right ear, there was some good improvement.

“My left ear was hooked up on the third day. That went great. Immediately, the things I heard sounded smooth and creamy. The audiologist also continued programming my right ear to further improve how I heard on that side and get it closer to the quality I was experiencing on the left. By the end of the session, I had further improvement in the right ear.

“The fourth day there was more reprogramming of my right ear. After a while, the audiologist began to suspect that the problem for my right ear had been that it was being overstimulated during the programming process. The thinking was that we would be a lot closer to having this problem solved by the time of the next programming session a month later. And pretty much it was. All in all, I came away from the initial session feeling good, feeling positive.”

As for Doug, after completing the initial programming for his Advanced Bionics CII Bionic Ear, he found himself awash in sound. “Wow, I remember thinking. The world has really changed,” he says. “Almost a month later, back at work, people were saying to me that they no longer had to raise their voices to be heard. Another week or so beyond that, voices were sounding much more natural. The voice I enjoyed hearing most was my five-year-old granddaughter every time she said to me ‘Grandpa, I love you.’”

Time For Celebration
It may be hard to predict how you’ll react once you begin hearing sound through your cochlear implant. You might jump up and down for joy. You might laugh more heartily than you have in a long time. Or, like Linda, you might be emotionally overwhelmed.

“I burst into tears,” she says. “I was amazed by all the little things I could pick up on—like the sound of coffee brewing in the pot, rain beating down on the roof of my car as I drove along, crickets chirping on a warm night.

“But above all, I finally, finally, had speech comprehension. I could carry on normal conversations with my husband. Even from another room! We could talk and laugh easily in the car, with the radio on, no less. At work, I felt confident about applying for a promotion at work—and I got it. For me, life made sense once again.”

Doug, meanwhile, is at this stage an experienced user of his cochlear implant, so he’s naturally quite comfortable with the technology in all its applications. So comfortable, in fact, that it’s hard to get him to ever take it off.

“I wear the processor and microphone from the minute I wake up in the morning until the time I go to bed at night,” he beams. “I’m not claiming it’s as good as normal, natural hearing, but wow, this is so much better than hearing aids. I love this wonder of technology. I love to hear. I feel so much more connected to the real world because of it.”

The opinions and experiences expressed in these stories solely reflect those of the recipients interviewed. Results and experiences with the Advanced Bionics HiResolution Bionic Ear System will vary.

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