Miss-Delectable
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The Herald-Mail
Michael Kade Fotta, 6, can hear his mother talking to him in their living room as he fidgets on the sofa.
Joey Hoffman, 11, can hear his mom talking to him too though he cannot always tell what she's saying just by listening. More often he sees her talking as she signs.
Both Washington County boys use cochlear implants to hear. Their parents' say the boys are doing great with the implants.
However, they both aren't hearing the same things.
Cochlear implants are not hearing aids; they don't amplify sound. The device helps the brain detect audible noises by bypassing damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulating auditory nerves, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders' Web site.
Users have to learn to interpret the sounds they hear, in some cases relearning hearing and speech.
Judy Hoffman, Joey's mother, says older people who have gotten cochlear implants have described the voices they've heard as "metallic" or "cartoony," as if Donald Duck were speaking.
How many words an individual is able to interpret using the implant varies from person to person, says Jennifer Gross, Michael Kade's speech pathologist. It varies based on whether that person has ever heard sound before, how long they were deaf before getting the implant and how long they've had to adapt to using the implant.
Learning to hear
Hoffman's son, Joey, was 7 when he got his cochlear implant - old enough that he remembers not being able to hear.
And then what it was like to suddenly have hearing.
"At first, I felt like, 'wow.' This was weird," says Joey in American Sign Language, interpreted by his mother. "It was a little bit scary."
Four years later and Joey is still learning new sounds.
He knows a few words, but mostly he separates noises and associates things with specific sounds. Judy Hoffman says when she calls Joey's name, she doesn't know what it sounds like to him, but he hears a sound he associates with his name.
Joey explains: "I can hear the words, what they're saying, but I can't voice it. I don't understand the words."
He once asked his mother to be quiet when it was the rooster outside making the noise. Now he knows that sound is the rooster.
"I listen to my dog. I can hear him crying or barking," says Joey, who rattles off a long list of things he can hear, from the vacuum, cars, rain and wind to the farm animals on their Mount Aetna Road property.
Making progress
Michael Kade could hear when he was born and learned to say a few words like "dada," "mama," and "dog" before losing his hearing, says his mother, Kerri Fotta. He was 23 months old when he had surgery for a cochlear implant.
Michael Kade can distinguish words he hears and talks like most other 6-year-olds, though when a reporter visited his Sharpsburg Pike home he was a bit shy.
Kerri Fotta says her son's speech is 70 to 75 percent intelligible to people outside the family. His parents have been learning to help him with speech therapy; such as Kerri Fotta putting her fingers under her son's chin and lifting it up to let him know to finish the "d" sound on the end of "dad."
With the implant, Michael Kade has mild hearing loss. Without it, he's totally deaf.
Learning to fit in
Both boys are doing well in their schools: Joey Hoffman is at Maryland School for the Deaf, and Michael Kade is at Sharpsburg Elementary School.
"For our family it was 100 percent from the go, he would go to a hearing school. We wanted him to be verbal," says Kerri Fotta.
Michael Kade is almost at grade level with the new words the kindergarten class learns, Kerri Fotta says.
"He's made great improvement. He's just like any other kid," says Christa Phillips, Michael Kade's teacher. Phillips wears an FM system around her neck that amplifies the sound of her voice for Michael Kade alone so he can hear her better from a distance and with other noises in the classroom.
Joey went to a public school for grades one to three with a sign-language interpreter, but switched back to Maryland School for the Deaf because he couldn't communicate with the other kids. They talked too fast.
He got along with the other children, but he was lonely because he couldn't talk with them, Judy Hoffman says.
At the deaf school, Joey sometimes removes his implant. This helps him fit in better - most of the other children don't wear them - and keeps the unit from getting damaged when he plays.
Judy Hoffman says some members of the deaf community are not accepting of cochlear implants - they see sign language as the natural language of deaf people - but this hasn't been as big a problem as her family feared, Hoffman says.
In school, Joey excels in math and struggles with reading because, his mother says, he has to memorize the words - he cannot sound them out.
Judy Hoffman says she and her husband, Keith, wanted Joey to have a cochlear implant because being bilingual would present him with more opportunities.
So how is it working out?
"It's a long process. We won't know how it's worked out until he's grown," Judy Hoffman says.
How a cochlear implant works
A cochlear implant has two parts - an internal part and an external part. The internal portion contains a surgically implanted signal receiver under the skin behind the ear with a thin bundle of electrodes that stimulate nerve cells in the inner ear.
The external portion consist of two parts:
· A microphone that picks up sound from the environment. On Michael Kade Fotta and Joey Hoffman, the mic is a small disc on the back of the outside of their heads, over the area where the implant is. It stays in place because there is a magnet in the mic so it stays over the implanted receiver, which contains metal.
· A sound processor that selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. Joey uses a speech processor that fits over his ear. Michael Kade uses a box-shaped processor that he carries in a pouch that hangs down his back.
Michael Kade Fotta, 6, can hear his mother talking to him in their living room as he fidgets on the sofa.
Joey Hoffman, 11, can hear his mom talking to him too though he cannot always tell what she's saying just by listening. More often he sees her talking as she signs.
Both Washington County boys use cochlear implants to hear. Their parents' say the boys are doing great with the implants.
However, they both aren't hearing the same things.
Cochlear implants are not hearing aids; they don't amplify sound. The device helps the brain detect audible noises by bypassing damaged parts of the ear and directly stimulating auditory nerves, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders' Web site.
Users have to learn to interpret the sounds they hear, in some cases relearning hearing and speech.
Judy Hoffman, Joey's mother, says older people who have gotten cochlear implants have described the voices they've heard as "metallic" or "cartoony," as if Donald Duck were speaking.
How many words an individual is able to interpret using the implant varies from person to person, says Jennifer Gross, Michael Kade's speech pathologist. It varies based on whether that person has ever heard sound before, how long they were deaf before getting the implant and how long they've had to adapt to using the implant.
Learning to hear
Hoffman's son, Joey, was 7 when he got his cochlear implant - old enough that he remembers not being able to hear.
And then what it was like to suddenly have hearing.
"At first, I felt like, 'wow.' This was weird," says Joey in American Sign Language, interpreted by his mother. "It was a little bit scary."
Four years later and Joey is still learning new sounds.
He knows a few words, but mostly he separates noises and associates things with specific sounds. Judy Hoffman says when she calls Joey's name, she doesn't know what it sounds like to him, but he hears a sound he associates with his name.
Joey explains: "I can hear the words, what they're saying, but I can't voice it. I don't understand the words."
He once asked his mother to be quiet when it was the rooster outside making the noise. Now he knows that sound is the rooster.
"I listen to my dog. I can hear him crying or barking," says Joey, who rattles off a long list of things he can hear, from the vacuum, cars, rain and wind to the farm animals on their Mount Aetna Road property.
Making progress
Michael Kade could hear when he was born and learned to say a few words like "dada," "mama," and "dog" before losing his hearing, says his mother, Kerri Fotta. He was 23 months old when he had surgery for a cochlear implant.
Michael Kade can distinguish words he hears and talks like most other 6-year-olds, though when a reporter visited his Sharpsburg Pike home he was a bit shy.
Kerri Fotta says her son's speech is 70 to 75 percent intelligible to people outside the family. His parents have been learning to help him with speech therapy; such as Kerri Fotta putting her fingers under her son's chin and lifting it up to let him know to finish the "d" sound on the end of "dad."
With the implant, Michael Kade has mild hearing loss. Without it, he's totally deaf.
Learning to fit in
Both boys are doing well in their schools: Joey Hoffman is at Maryland School for the Deaf, and Michael Kade is at Sharpsburg Elementary School.
"For our family it was 100 percent from the go, he would go to a hearing school. We wanted him to be verbal," says Kerri Fotta.
Michael Kade is almost at grade level with the new words the kindergarten class learns, Kerri Fotta says.
"He's made great improvement. He's just like any other kid," says Christa Phillips, Michael Kade's teacher. Phillips wears an FM system around her neck that amplifies the sound of her voice for Michael Kade alone so he can hear her better from a distance and with other noises in the classroom.
Joey went to a public school for grades one to three with a sign-language interpreter, but switched back to Maryland School for the Deaf because he couldn't communicate with the other kids. They talked too fast.
He got along with the other children, but he was lonely because he couldn't talk with them, Judy Hoffman says.
At the deaf school, Joey sometimes removes his implant. This helps him fit in better - most of the other children don't wear them - and keeps the unit from getting damaged when he plays.
Judy Hoffman says some members of the deaf community are not accepting of cochlear implants - they see sign language as the natural language of deaf people - but this hasn't been as big a problem as her family feared, Hoffman says.
In school, Joey excels in math and struggles with reading because, his mother says, he has to memorize the words - he cannot sound them out.
Judy Hoffman says she and her husband, Keith, wanted Joey to have a cochlear implant because being bilingual would present him with more opportunities.
So how is it working out?
"It's a long process. We won't know how it's worked out until he's grown," Judy Hoffman says.
How a cochlear implant works
A cochlear implant has two parts - an internal part and an external part. The internal portion contains a surgically implanted signal receiver under the skin behind the ear with a thin bundle of electrodes that stimulate nerve cells in the inner ear.
The external portion consist of two parts:
· A microphone that picks up sound from the environment. On Michael Kade Fotta and Joey Hoffman, the mic is a small disc on the back of the outside of their heads, over the area where the implant is. It stays in place because there is a magnet in the mic so it stays over the implanted receiver, which contains metal.
· A sound processor that selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. Joey uses a speech processor that fits over his ear. Michael Kade uses a box-shaped processor that he carries in a pouch that hangs down his back.
