Why?

Congrats to Rick and Jillio on your children graduating from college. That must be so exciting!
 
diehardbiker said:
I have answer to why.... Some of you may not like this but this is the truth...

Most hearing parents who find themselves with Deaf child, they freaked out and got lost. Simply put, they can not accept the fact that their chid is Deaf, so they want to FIX it somehow, so having them thinking that getting CI will have them avoid learning sign language and learn to be adaptive with Deaf world... SAD!!! The real problem is the Hearing parents that got themselve in abyss denial. Want proof? Easy! Give me answer to what percentage of Hearing parents with Deaf child learn sign language???

There is answer. Hope someday they will change. CI is not a solution, adaptive is a solution.

DHB
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There you nailed it! Shame!

It's not a quick-fix solution for every deaf child out there.
 
rick48 said:
Yes, she worked hard at college, really enjoyed it and actually found time to study at least once a semester! Well for once we may have found common ground as I am certain that you are very proud of your son and his accomplishments, and you should be.

However, if you say you are more proud than me.....
Rick
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LOL, a parent's pride is a parent's pride. And :ty:. I am very proud of him.
 
well i agree with DHB on that as i am also a deaf child of hearing parents they didn't found out i was deaf when i was almost 3 they were shocked not freaking out and it was my dad who did the reseaching what schools i would go.
when they thought of CIs but they knew that CIs will not solve the deafness as deaf is always be deaf.

that is my 2 cent
 
I'll probably hear about this from some of the 'audism/oral folks' but here it goes...

Ok it's quite possible because of the neurological issues Adam has, eventually his hearing in his right ear will deteriorate further... if that happens then he would possibly qualify for a CI... BUT I honestly don't plan to go that route with him any time soon... at this point in his life, his HL doesn't slow him down-- and he's learning ASL (slowly, b/c getting him to sit still long enough to focus is a challange :D ) but he's learning... and quite honestly I don't feel it's my decision to make. When he's older and has the cognative reasoning to say...
"ya know mom, I think I'd like to have a CI" then we'll look into it.

Right now he goes to a Oral Only daycare-- and for now it's fine b/c he is little and all his services are provided on campus but in the future I don't think it will cut it... but there they're all 'oh will you get him a CI??' ~~ I get the same looks when I slip and mention "He signed THANK YOU this weekend" :Oops:

Do I feel like I'm doing him an injustice?? No, if I denied him access to language in general, that would be unjust -- but he uses his HA's and his few little signs and he's doing great... so why mess w/a good thing?? Now if he had NO hearing at all or was 'challanged' in a way he couldn't learn signs then I might consider it a little differently...

I've looked at the CI side of it- shoot, I worked for the physician who would be doing the surgery if he was to ever get one... and I just don't feel it's the right thing for him at this time~

I have never looked at Adam' deafness as something that needed to be 'fixed' or something to mourn/grieve over-- it's just a part of who he is just like his brown eyes are~~ I was just happy he was alive and healthy (for everything he's been thru)

But I do have a friend who views their childs hearing loss as a 'curse' and can't get over the fact their child isn't 'normal'-- cried over him needing a HA but thinks the CI's will correct his problem and he won't have a HL anymore... so I can understand why some people think that 'we all' (hearing parents of deaf children) might feel that way... those are the parents who tend to get the 'spotlight' if you will--

It's a PERSONAL and individual choice... no one is wrong, no one is right-- we do what WE feel is best for OUR CHILD... and we all should accept THAT--

Ok that's my two cents worth... from a hearing momma of an ACTIVE deaf/hoh toddler...
 
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DeafLissa90 said:
I do not want to start a huge debate but why do those people implant their child when it is not yet needed and dont implant them when it is needed?
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I didn't know an infant or toddler could get a CI when "not yet needed" This is just another one of those large areas of grey where it is personal preference. Lots of great points of views either side.
 
deafdude1 said:
I am living proof that no one really "needs" a CI. I did read that as long as the brain is being stimulated by sounds and some speech, it will fully develop the auditory processing centers. The majority of deaf people still have residual hearing that can be amplified with HAs. Theres lipreading, sign language and writing as a means of communication so not understanding 100% of speech needn't limit anyone.
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Well, my recruitment issues made it nearly impossible to wear my HA. I don't think switching has would have helped at all as amplication made it worse. As you crank up the sound on the HA, it becomes distorted and sound is already distorted enough when one has nerve deafness and recruitment issues. CIs provides a clarity that HAs never could provide me.

As far as I'm concerned, it's up to the deaf adult to decide if they want the CI or not. I am not going to tell them they shouldn't get a CI. Nor am I going to tell them to get a CI.

This is what I will do: Explain who gets the CI and how you can qualify for them. I will discuss the pros and cons of CIs and the successes and failures.

There is one poster here (who shall remain unnamed) whom I think could benefit from CIs. She does not want one. She had a bad experience with a surgery she had when she was young. Understandably, she doesn't want another surgery unless it's a life saving surgery. Her experience horrified me.

It is her decision to get a CI or to stick with HAs - not mine - regardless of my opinion. I only mention this because the op seems to think all deaf shouldn't get CIs. Likewise, I am not going to tell them to try more hearing aids and that hearing aids are good enough in order to prevent them from getting a CI surgery.
 
shel90 said:
Congrats to Rick and Jillio on your children graduating from college. That must be so exciting!
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Yeah. Now I wish there was a beer toasting smilely.. These two deserve one!

GRATS, Rick and Jillio.
 
Adamsmomma said:
Ok it's quite possible because of the neurological issues Adam has, eventually his hearing in his right ear will deteriorate further... if that happens then he would possibly qualify for a CI... BUT I honestly don't plan to go that route with him any time soon... at this point in his life, his HL doesn't slow him down-- and he's learning ASL (slowly, b/c getting him to sit still long enough to focus is a challange :D ) but he's learning... and quite honestly I don't feel it's my decision to make. When he's older and has the cognative reasoning to say...
"ya know mom, I think I'd like to have a CI" then we'll look into it.
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I totally agree with everything you said. Youd also be avoiding the risks of a non life saving surgery. No one's ever died from being deaf. Do you know the db HL in his better left ear? If the HL is moderate, he's probably already hearing with HA better than what a CI could achieve anyway.

I know all about being deaf since birth and it didn't slow me down either. Adam is going to do better than I did since my HL was worse and also HA technology wasn't as good. I am 100% oral and my parents said I actually taught myself how to read lips. I also could understand some speech as well.

hohDougRN said:
I didn't know an infant or toddler could get a CI when "not yet needed" This is just another one of those large areas of grey where it is personal preference. Lots of great points of views either side.
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From my observations, 20% of CIborgs today don't yet need CI as they were benefitting from HAs, but got CI anyway. That would be one thing if they paid the cost out of pocket but if insurance was "forced" to fund their CI, this makes me upset since it means higher insurance premiums for the rest of us. Insurance should only pay for CI for the profoundly deaf, not moderately HOH! I don't care if the HOH pay out of their pocket, that is their choice but I do not want to pay for their CI with higher insurance premiums!

deafskeptic said:
Well, my recruitment issues made it nearly impossible to wear my HA. I don't think switching has would have helped at all as amplication made it worse. As you crank up the sound on the HA, it becomes distorted and sound is already distorted enough when one has nerve deafness and recruitment issues. CIs provides a clarity that HAs never could provide me.
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Id like to learn more about this. Wasn't there a way to reprogram the HAs around recruitment? Wouldn't more compression and less SPL have worked? If amplification made it worse, couldn't your HA amplify quiet sounds more and loud sounds less? As for distortion, what I hear sounds normal to me since ive heard that way since birth.

deafskeptic said:
It is her decision to get a CI or to stick with HAs - not mine - regardless of my opinion. I only mention this because the op seems to think all deaf shouldn't get CIs. Likewise, I am not going to tell them to try more hearing aids and that hearing aids are good enough in order to prevent them from getting a CI surgery.
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CI is great for some deaf people and HAs are great for other deaf people. It simply depends on the person and benefits from HAs. I personally would get a CI(or two) if I lost my residual hearing and heard nothing with HAs. You should know that trying the best HAs is a requirement before getting CI. Only those with no residual hearing can skip that step. If I wanted CI now, you bet ill be trying a few different brands of HAs, they just might help enough like I read about one guy who went from 20% speech recognition to 80% when he tried the best HAs. He just saved himself(and insurance) $50,000 as well as all the risks of CI and surgery. It is my observation that 20% of the CI population could have done great had they tried the best HAs with the correct programming.

In your case, your HL was probably worse than mine so that alone made CI's odds of being better than HA fairly good. Throw in recruitment and the odds of CI being better increases further. It's my observations that once your HL gets to at least 90db and slopes downwards from there, CI becomes a reasonable choice with reasonable odds of being better. There's a few who got CI who's unaided audiograms I would have been happy to trade with.
 
Adamsmomma said:
I'll probably hear about this from some of the 'audism/oral folks' but here it goes...

Ok it's quite possible because of the neurological issues Adam has, eventually his hearing in his right ear will deteriorate further... if that happens then he would possibly qualify for a CI... BUT I honestly don't plan to go that route with him any time soon... at this point in his life, his HL doesn't slow him down-- and he's learning ASL (slowly, b/c getting him to sit still long enough to focus is a challange :D ) but he's learning... and quite honestly I don't feel it's my decision to make. When he's older and has the cognative reasoning to say...
"ya know mom, I think I'd like to have a CI" then we'll look into it.

Right now he goes to a Oral Only daycare-- and for now it's fine b/c he is little and all his services are provided on campus but in the future I don't think it will cut it... but there they're all 'oh will you get him a CI??' ~~ I get the same looks when I slip and mention "He signed THANK YOU this weekend" :Oops:

Do I feel like I'm doing him an injustice?? No, if I denied him access to language in general, that would be unjust -- but he uses his HA's and his few little signs and he's doing great... so why mess w/a good thing?? Now if he had NO hearing at all or was 'challanged' in a way he couldn't learn signs then I might consider it a little differently...

I've looked at the CI side of it- shoot, I worked for the physician who would be doing the surgery if he was to ever get one... and I just don't feel it's the right thing for him at this time~

I have never looked at Adam' deafness as something that needed to be 'fixed' or something to mourn/grieve over-- it's just a part of who he is just like his brown eyes are~~ I was just happy he was alive and healthy (for everything he's been thru)

But I do have a friend who views their childs hearing loss as a 'curse' and can't get over the fact their child isn't 'normal'-- cried over him needing a HA but thinks the CI's will correct his problem and he won't have a HL anymore... so I can understand why some people think that 'we all' (hearing parents of deaf children) might feel that way... those are the parents who tend to get the 'spotlight' if you will--

It's a PERSONAL and individual choice... no one is wrong, no one is right-- we do what WE feel is best for OUR CHILD... and we all should accept THAT--

Ok that's my two cents worth... from a hearing momma of an ACTIVE deaf/hoh toddler...
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I totally understand where you are coming from. But the reason I made the decision to give my daughter her CI was because she WAS trying to tell me she wanted to hear more. She has a progressive loss and it dropped to severe, and she was no longer able to hear the things she had heard before. She would hold a squeaky toy up to her hearing aid and squeeze it and ask me why the toy was broken. That was her 4 1/2 year old way of saying "I want my hearing back".
I also considered the effort that learning speech would take. I have always wanted my child to develop BOTH modes of communication, and that was becoming excedingly difficult as her hearing loss became more profound. By giving her more hearing, I was making the learning process easier and more successful for her.
And lastly, I simply wanted to give her EVERY tool I could. The CI was a more effective tool for her hearing loss than the hearing aid was. I would never deny her ANYTHING that will help her become a sucessful person therefore I could not deny her a CI.

My :2c:
 
deafdude1 said:
Id like to learn more about this. Wasn't there a way to reprogram the HAs around recruitment? Wouldn't more compression and less SPL have worked? If amplification made it worse, couldn't your HA amplify quiet sounds more and loud sounds less? As for distortion, what I hear sounds normal to me since ive heard that way since birth.
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I'm afraid my hair cells in my cochlear were too badly damaged to benefit from any programing with HAs. My recruitment was quite severe. Even the sounds of dishes clicking against each other made my ears ring.

When I got my CIs, I found sounds a lot easier to understand though I did have to relearn some sounds like motors. The distorted sounds sounded normal to me before my CI and the CI sounds sounded strange to me at first.

As for my HL, it was mostly in the 115s range. I think that my HL may have become progressive when I turned 19. I was born with a severe to profound HL and it was in the 70 to 100 range. I've always regretting not taking an audiogram over the years to make sure I wasn't losing my hearing.
 
Some "off label" use of CIs is actually prolly an awesome idea. I really do think that the FDA should approve CI for cases where there's severe recruitment or tintitinas.
 
deafskeptic said:
I'm afraid my hair cells in my cochlear were too badly damaged to benefit from any programing with HAs. My recruitment was quite severe. Even the sounds of dishes clicking against each other made my ears ring.

When I got my CIs, I found sounds a lot easier to understand though I did have to relearn some sounds like motors. The distorted sounds sounded normal to me before my CI and the CI sounds sounded strange to me at first.

As for my HL, it was mostly in the 115s range. I think that my HL may have become progressive when I turned 19. I was born with a severe to profound HL and it was in the 70 to 100 range. I've always regretting not taking an audiogram over the years to make sure I wasn't losing my hearing.
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Sorry to hear(pun intended) thanks for the reply. So no amount of programming the HAs was enough to circumvent your recruitment? You mentioned you had 80db HL at 250Hz, what was it at 500Hz? You also mentioned it was 115db range.

Like you, I also was born with a similar loss to yours and it's worse today. I no longer hear above 1500Hz. I still have my audiogram when I was 16, wish I could find earlier ones but the note on the audiogram did say my HL has been stable on earlier audiograms. I am guessing my loss progressed very slowly just like yours. I didn't even notice my hearing got worse till my 2008 audiogram showed the 110-120db numbers at 1000Hz and above. Fortunately my low frequencies remained unchanged, maybe 2db worse. I also don't have much recruitment at any frequency. Nothing becomes uncomfortably loud.

deafdyke said:
Some "off label" use of CIs is actually prolly an awesome idea. I really do think that the FDA should approve CI for cases where there's severe recruitment or tintitinas.
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CI does not guarantee curing tinnitus. It can get around recruitment with HAs. But the main thing is one should be profoundly deaf and recieve no benefit from HAs. I am not touching CI as long as I benefit from HAs even if I get more tinnitus and recruitment.
 
deafdude1 said:
Sorry to hear(pun intended) thanks for the reply. So no amount of programming the HAs was enough to circumvent your recruitment? You mentioned you had 80db HL at 250Hz, what was it at 500Hz? You also mentioned it was 115db range.

Like you, I also was born with a similar loss to yours and it's worse today. I no longer hear above 1500Hz. I still have my audiogram when I was 16, wish I could find earlier ones but the note on the audiogram did say my HL has been stable on earlier audiograms. I am guessing my loss progressed very slowly just like yours. I didn't even notice my hearing got worse till my 2008 audiogram showed the 110-120db numbers at 1000Hz and above. Fortunately my low frequencies remained unchanged, maybe 2db worse. I also don't have much recruitment at any frequency. Nothing becomes uncomfortably loud.




CI does not guarantee curing tinnitus. It can get around recruitment with HAs. But the main thing is one should be profoundly deaf and recieve no benefit from HAs. I am not touching CI as long as I benefit from HAs even if I get more tinnitus and recruitment.
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See, that is so interesting. You call 75% with a closed set of words lots of "benefit". I wouldn't. With a closed set, (depending on the words) I would think that 75% is not great benefit. That would mean that you are missing 1/4 of what you already know someone is saying!

Were they spondee words? CVC pairs? Rhyming? Just a vowel change? What were they?

What do you get if it is an open set???
 
deafdude1 said:
Sorry to hear(pun intended) thanks for the reply. So no amount of programming the HAs was enough to circumvent your recruitment? You mentioned you had 80db HL at 250Hz, what was it at 500Hz? You also mentioned it was 115db range.

Like you, I also was born with a similar loss to yours and it's worse today. I no longer hear above 1500Hz. I still have my audiogram when I was 16, wish I could find earlier ones but the note on the audiogram did say my HL has been stable on earlier audiograms. I am guessing my loss progressed very slowly just like yours. I didn't even notice my hearing got worse till my 2008 audiogram showed the 110-120db numbers at 1000Hz and above. Fortunately my low frequencies remained unchanged, maybe 2db worse. I also don't have much recruitment at any frequency. Nothing becomes uncomfortably loud.
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My loss was 80 at 500 Hz and the rest was in the 115 in the other Hz ranges.

I don't recall the exact numbers for my hearing loss as a child so I can't answer that except to say I remember it being at 70s to the 100s.

Glad to hear that about your lack of recruitment. I would have stuck with my HAs if it weren't for that.
 
slowly, b/c getting him to sit still long enough to focus is a challange
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Have you tried ADD meds? What about looking into "alternative" treatments? I know fish oil capsules have been shown to help kids with ADD issues
Deafdude.............true, but I do think that most folks with significent recruitment would like to actually hear. I think they're more like deafskeptic....
I would have stuck with my HAs if it weren't for that.
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And yes, I know that CI doesn't always cure tintituas but it has been shown to pretty much cure Meniere's, and have a hug effect on a lot of tintitas.
 
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