Quote:
Originally Posted by shel90
OOOH ..that is a tough one.."early implantation" is a very sensitive subject within the Deaf community for several reasons. For myself, I am not comfortable with the idea because I am a HA user and severely profoundly deaf but can use my HAs so well so I believe that the doctors need to give babies more time to see how well they do with their HAs before implanting them. Now, we are seeing 6 month olds getting implanted? How will we ever know how well they could have done with HAs. That is why I am not comfortable with the idea of implanting babies. Doesnt mean I will reject the parents or the kids themselves but I will have to refrain my feelings and opinions from them.
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Most implantations happen around the age of 18 months to 2. Is this still too young for you? I think this is probably what Raychelle has in mind rather than 6 months. Most babies with some residual hearing are trialled with HAs first before the CI is decided upon. Maybe with some very large losses they don't bother?
Also, you are a fairly uncommon success story for someone with such a big loss. My nephew has a similar loss to yours (120db I think?) and HAs were useless for him. It could take years of intensive therapy in that situation to ascertain whether or not someone benefits from HAs with very large losses.