Real Life Stories

Real Stories. Real Recipients.

The Getting Is Good
Now it is time for your child to receive his or her cochlear implant. This involves a surgery in which the small electrode coil of the device will be permanently and very precisely placed near the acoustic nerve of the inner ear.

Many parents of kids who have already been through the surgery will tell you that it 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 activated—can seem to go by at a snail’s pace because you’re so anxious for your child to hear. That’s perfectly understandable, given what it is that awaits: The beginning of a life overflowing with sound.

Questions Are Natural
Luanna and Peter Shibuya of Tucson, Arizona, were certainly worried about their son Parker’s surgery—which is why they were so appreciative when the audiologist and the surgery staff sat down with them to explain, step-by-step, how the day of surgery would go for Parker, who was then 7 months old.

“We had questions about the CAT-scan they had done on Parker; we were anxious to find out if everything looked good structurally,” says Luanna, aware that, if Parker’s inner ear were improperly formed, the surgery would have to be called off. Luanna also had questions about the risks involved. She was relieved to learn that, in the hands of a highly skilled surgeon, this FDA-approved surgery can be very safe and offers a high probability of success, with little or no complications.

Most of the questions asked by Lisa Kellogg of Saugus, California, as the day of surgery drew near for her 9-month-old daughter, Madison, were directed to the audiologist. “The thing I most wanted to know was whether a particular noise—a cat meowing, for instance—would sound to Madison the same as it does to my ears.” Hers is a frequently asked question, and the answer is “maybe,” because every recipient of a cochlear implant is different, and because there are limits to what the technology can do.

A Friend Indeed
Most young children have trouble understanding the concept of surgery, let alone surgery designed to enable hearing. For that reason, some parents of children have found it helpful to mentally prepare their son or daughter by describing the upcoming operation in a way that suggests something truly magical is about to happen, much as if Christmas or a birthday were just around the corner.

Also for children, there is Bionic Buddy from Advanced Bionics. “Bionic Buddy is a cute, plush-toy monkey that wears the cochlear implant headset and processor pack,” explains Luanna, a clinical psychologist. “He comes with a DVD that tells the story of how he received his implant. The concepts in that story are reinforced by a coloring book that’s included.

“The purpose is to introduce your child to the idea of going to the hospital to get these same pieces to wear, just like the Bionic Buddy. It gives your child something to relate to. He or she can show off the Bionic Buddy to friends in the neighborhood or at school, which is good because it helps the other children be accepting of the components your child will be wearing when he or she is around those friends.”

The Longest Day
You will be asked to bring your child to the hospital either the night before surgery or very early in the morning on the day itself. Once you get there, expect a roller-coaster ride of emotions, especially during the two to three hours you will be separated from your child while the surgery takes place.

“The waiting was the hardest part,” says Amber Tuggle, an Atlanta attorney whose son, Will received his first Advanced Bionics cochlear implant at 12 months (followed by a second implant less than a year later). “It was easier to bear because the surgeon made sure that someone from the operating room would call the waiting room every so often to let us know what was happening. But each time that phone rang, I remember holding my breath and shaking.”

The first call was to tell Amber and husband Jonathan that Will was being prepared for surgery. The second call came about an hour later and informed them that Will’s inner ear anatomy checked out fine and so they were going to continue the operation. The third call brought word that the surgery was completed, plus the welcome news that Will experienced no problems. Says Amber, “When we spoke face-to-face with the surgeon afterward, he told us that they had achieved 100% insertion of the electrode area into Will’s cochlea, meaning that all of the channels of the device were likely to work at maximum capacity.”

A Quick Recovery
Many parents’ jaws drop when they see how fast their children bounce back from surgery.* Amber recalls, “Will woke up the next morning very active—standing up in his crib, waving to all the nurses walking down the hall. I was so surprised. In fact, I started wondering how we keep him quiet enough until his head could completely heal from the surgery.”

Lisa, the mother of Madison, recalls that her daughter was behaving normally right away too. “As soon as we got home, she used sign language to demand her usual crackers, cookies, fruit snacks, and juice,” Lisa says with a laugh. “Then, the next thing I know, she’s jumping up and down on the sofa and leaping off it, acting like nothing at all had happened. I couldn’t believe her energy. The next day she was outside, running around as always.”

Luanna, meanwhile, was delighted to discover that Parker didn’t need any of the ibuprofen the hospital had sent home with him in case of postoperative pain. It was the same way when Parker’s younger brother Sebastian received a cochlear implant of his own some time later.”

Activating The Cochlear Implant
Families usually celebrate once they see the young patient is doing fine after surgery, but Amber decided to hold off on that until three weeks after the surgery—when Will’s cochlear implant was turned on for the first time. Activation of the cochlear implant typically is performed at the audiologist’s office. Known as initial stimulation or the mapping session, it involves testing to make sure the device is working correctly and then creating a customized set of programs for the cochlear implant’s electronics processor. It’s during this process that your son or daughter should begin to be able to hear.

Your audiologist will guide you in scheduling your child’s mapping sessions. Multiple mapping sessions are typically needed through the first few months of your child’s journey.

Adjusting To Sound
Many moms and dads fret that, during the mapping sessions, the sudden ability to hear will startle their child to the point of tears. And, indeed, some children do cry at first. Sound, after all, is totally new, strange, and overwhelming to a child who never before has experienced it.

Little Will Tuggle, on the other hand, took it well. “When his implant was turned on and the sound began flowing to Will’s ear, he gripped my hand tightly and looked around the room, trying to figure out what had just happened,” says Amber. “He wasn’t afraid; he was just filled with amazement.” Later that night, Amber organized a kitchen pot-and-pan band, with Will as lead musician. “We banged on our ‘instruments’ with metal spoons and clapped pot lids together like cymbals—and the whole time Will’s eyes were wide as saucers. He loved it. In fact, it was as if we couldn’t drench him in enough noise to satisfy him.”

Three weeks after that came an even bigger breakthrough. Will pointed to one of the family’s dogs and tried to sound out the word for it. “I burst into tears and started jumping up and down,” says a joyful Amber. “I called for my husband to hurry into the room, and the whole time I was going, ‘Will, do it again! Do it again! Do it again!’” It then dawned on Amber that not only had Will been hearing sounds, but sounds that he could make complete sense of and so was able to begin picking up language. “From that time on, Will just seemed much more engaged with the world around him. He’d wake up in the morning and point to his ears as if to tell us, ‘I want to hear today. I want to be in the world of sound, not in the world of silence.’ That confirmed for us that every decision Jonathan and I had made about having him implanted was absolutely the right one.”

*Results may vary.

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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