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Deaf — not disabled: Roberson athlete overcomes her hearing loss | CITIZEN-TIMES.com | Asheville Citizen-Times
The gray piece of plastic behind Kayla Sutton’s left ear isn’t a phone, although a referee at one of the 16-year-old’s basketball games mistook it for one.
The official stopped the game to take a look at the device behind the tall, brown-haired forward’s ear before finding out that it part of Sutton’s cochlear implant.
Sutton, who went completely deaf in the third grade, uses the implant to help her hear.
“I was like, come on,” she said, smiling, in her living room one recent afternoon.
While instances like that sometimes annoy the high school sophomore, she generally takes it all in stride — explaining to people what the implant is and how it works.
“I joke around about it,” Sutton said. “If they don’t ask, I ask them if they want to know what it is.”
Her father, Jerry Sutton, said he and his wife have always encouraged people to ask about their daughter’s disability.
“When you see someone with a disability, it’s OK to ask why,” Jerry Sutton said.
Sutton suffered from hearing loss as a child, a possible result of being placed on a heart and lung machine and being in a medically induced coma when she was an infant.
Sutton wore hearing aids from the time she was nine months old, but went completely deaf when she was in the third grade.
“As parents, it was heartbreaking to realize we had a child with a disability,” Jerry Sutton said.
Although doctors warned Sutton about participating in contact sports, her parents encouraged their daughter to take part in activities that were safe for her, never treating her any differently than her older brother. Along with playing basketball, Sutton swims and runs track.
“My parents let me do whatever I want to do,” she said.
After she went completely deaf, her parents tried to teach her sign language, but Sutton wanted to hear again.
“She had heard and had functioning language and hearing for most of her life,” Jerry Sutton said. “She wanted to hear.”
The Suttons heard about the cochlear implant, and although their daughter was only in the third grade, she knew that she wanted the operation. Sutton underwent a procedure to implant the device and a few months later, she was hearing.
“I can pretty much hear everything now,” Sutton said.
The gray piece of plastic contains a microphone and speech processor that transmits sounds to a receiver inside Sutton’s ear. The sounds are converted into electric impulses, which are collected and sent to different regions of the auditory nerve, which send the signals to Sutton’s brain.
Sutton’s brain recognizes the signals as sound. Although hearing through the implant is different from normal hearing, Sutton is able to carry on a conversation, talk on the phone to her friends and hear other sounds in the environment.
“It’s an important part of me,” Sutton said.
But the cochlear implant is not perfect.
Sutton had to learn how to hear the electronic beeps and buzzes, which she describes first sounded like “Donald Duck and a robot mixed together.”
It is also hard for Sutton to distinguish sounds when there is a lot of background noise, including in a noisy gym when she is playing basketball.
Along with calling out plays, Sutton’s coach Kristy Garrett used hand signals and relayed information to Sutton through other players on the JV basketball team at Roberson High School.
Garrett said Sutton was a big part of the team’s successful season and that being deaf will have no effect on her success in the sport.
“It was not hard because of who Kayla is,” Garrett said. “She is a very devoted basketball player that does not give up easily. The average player would give up but she doesn’t.”
The gray piece of plastic behind Kayla Sutton’s left ear isn’t a phone, although a referee at one of the 16-year-old’s basketball games mistook it for one.
The official stopped the game to take a look at the device behind the tall, brown-haired forward’s ear before finding out that it part of Sutton’s cochlear implant.
Sutton, who went completely deaf in the third grade, uses the implant to help her hear.
“I was like, come on,” she said, smiling, in her living room one recent afternoon.
While instances like that sometimes annoy the high school sophomore, she generally takes it all in stride — explaining to people what the implant is and how it works.
“I joke around about it,” Sutton said. “If they don’t ask, I ask them if they want to know what it is.”
Her father, Jerry Sutton, said he and his wife have always encouraged people to ask about their daughter’s disability.
“When you see someone with a disability, it’s OK to ask why,” Jerry Sutton said.
Sutton suffered from hearing loss as a child, a possible result of being placed on a heart and lung machine and being in a medically induced coma when she was an infant.
Sutton wore hearing aids from the time she was nine months old, but went completely deaf when she was in the third grade.
“As parents, it was heartbreaking to realize we had a child with a disability,” Jerry Sutton said.
Although doctors warned Sutton about participating in contact sports, her parents encouraged their daughter to take part in activities that were safe for her, never treating her any differently than her older brother. Along with playing basketball, Sutton swims and runs track.
“My parents let me do whatever I want to do,” she said.
After she went completely deaf, her parents tried to teach her sign language, but Sutton wanted to hear again.
“She had heard and had functioning language and hearing for most of her life,” Jerry Sutton said. “She wanted to hear.”
The Suttons heard about the cochlear implant, and although their daughter was only in the third grade, she knew that she wanted the operation. Sutton underwent a procedure to implant the device and a few months later, she was hearing.
“I can pretty much hear everything now,” Sutton said.
The gray piece of plastic contains a microphone and speech processor that transmits sounds to a receiver inside Sutton’s ear. The sounds are converted into electric impulses, which are collected and sent to different regions of the auditory nerve, which send the signals to Sutton’s brain.
Sutton’s brain recognizes the signals as sound. Although hearing through the implant is different from normal hearing, Sutton is able to carry on a conversation, talk on the phone to her friends and hear other sounds in the environment.
“It’s an important part of me,” Sutton said.
But the cochlear implant is not perfect.
Sutton had to learn how to hear the electronic beeps and buzzes, which she describes first sounded like “Donald Duck and a robot mixed together.”
It is also hard for Sutton to distinguish sounds when there is a lot of background noise, including in a noisy gym when she is playing basketball.
Along with calling out plays, Sutton’s coach Kristy Garrett used hand signals and relayed information to Sutton through other players on the JV basketball team at Roberson High School.
Garrett said Sutton was a big part of the team’s successful season and that being deaf will have no effect on her success in the sport.
“It was not hard because of who Kayla is,” Garrett said. “She is a very devoted basketball player that does not give up easily. The average player would give up but she doesn’t.”