Miss-Delectable
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Lauren Boehmke embraces the flexibility
Lauren Boehmke and three friends shared heaping pasta dishes at an Edina restaurant on a recent Saturday night. As always, Boehmke positioned herself to her friends' left side.
She participated in the conversation, rolling her eyes as her friends ribbed her about the magnetic processor hidden in her wavy black hair and her ability to read lips across the cafeteria. With the aid of the cochlear implant near her right ear, the Eden Prairie 17-year-old can participate in a spoken conversation and even talk on the phone. Without it, she can't hear a thing.
Boehmke's cochlear implant sends sound past her damaged cochlea straight to her aural nerve and on to her brain. She knows about the controversy around cochlear implants, but says she's never been challenged by other deaf people.
"They're more accepting of it now," she said. "Now people are knowledgeable about cochlear implants; before they didn't know what it was."
She does struggle a bit with her deaf/hearing identity.
"I do function as a hearing person, but without any hearing aids I would be deaf," she reflected in an e-mail. "I would have to say I would be a hard-of-hearing person. But it's funny because I think the hearing loss that I have makes me a little shy around hearing people, even the people I may know. But if I'm around deaf people, I have higher self-esteem and less insecurities. But I function in both worlds really well."
Boehmke was adopted from Bogota, Colombia. She was adopted at 6 months old. She was fitted with a hearing aid at age 1.
"I didn't pay much attention to hearing," she said of the years before her implant surgery. "I was very visual. I remember having some frustration, too."
When she was 9, her mother broached the idea of an implant. Lauren was older than many children who have the surgery, but intensive speech therapy meant she spoke well, and she was considered a good candidate.
"It was hard," said Mary Beth Wenell. "You don't want to put your child through surgery, but we wanted her to have as much opportunity to learn as we could."
Lauren recalls playing checkers with her dad at the hospital, and having a huge bandage on her head.
The first sound she heard with the cochlear implant was water running from a faucet.
"I didn't like it, so I threw it [the magnetic processor] away," she said. But many adjustments later, she is used to the sounds she hears.
"I can communicate more," she said. "I can lip-read well, so I can talk to hearing people. I'm more aware of sounds: the doorbell, the laundry beeper. ... I can hear things I never heard before."
She is active in the ASL club at Eden Prairie High School, where she just finished her junior year. Her ASL teacher, Albert Walla, said he is impressed by her flexibility.
"Lauren can use the phone, socialize with anyone, use her voice anytime," he wrote in an e-mail. "I don't think people will know she is deaf with a CI [cochlear implant]. I have seen her with deaf people. No one will know she is a functionally hearing deaf person with CI. She has deaf behaviors in her. She has hearing behaviors in her. I have not met anyone like her."
Boehmke attends deaf and ASL cultural and social events, with hearing friends and with deaf friends.
She has plans to get another implant this summer, hoping to improve her hearing. She's looking to the future, which could include a deaf college like the National Technological Institute for the Deaf or Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., or one of the colleges in the University of Minnesota system. She would like to study marine biology, or education for deaf and hard-of-hearing kids.
"I like the way I am right now," she said. "I like being in the hearing world. I like being bilingual. [ASL] is a different language. It's my first language, then I have English. Sign language is a beautiful language. It is a beautiful way to express poetry, feelings, objects of the world. You can express a lot of things."
Lauren Boehmke and three friends shared heaping pasta dishes at an Edina restaurant on a recent Saturday night. As always, Boehmke positioned herself to her friends' left side.
She participated in the conversation, rolling her eyes as her friends ribbed her about the magnetic processor hidden in her wavy black hair and her ability to read lips across the cafeteria. With the aid of the cochlear implant near her right ear, the Eden Prairie 17-year-old can participate in a spoken conversation and even talk on the phone. Without it, she can't hear a thing.
Boehmke's cochlear implant sends sound past her damaged cochlea straight to her aural nerve and on to her brain. She knows about the controversy around cochlear implants, but says she's never been challenged by other deaf people.
"They're more accepting of it now," she said. "Now people are knowledgeable about cochlear implants; before they didn't know what it was."
She does struggle a bit with her deaf/hearing identity.
"I do function as a hearing person, but without any hearing aids I would be deaf," she reflected in an e-mail. "I would have to say I would be a hard-of-hearing person. But it's funny because I think the hearing loss that I have makes me a little shy around hearing people, even the people I may know. But if I'm around deaf people, I have higher self-esteem and less insecurities. But I function in both worlds really well."
Boehmke was adopted from Bogota, Colombia. She was adopted at 6 months old. She was fitted with a hearing aid at age 1.
"I didn't pay much attention to hearing," she said of the years before her implant surgery. "I was very visual. I remember having some frustration, too."
When she was 9, her mother broached the idea of an implant. Lauren was older than many children who have the surgery, but intensive speech therapy meant she spoke well, and she was considered a good candidate.
"It was hard," said Mary Beth Wenell. "You don't want to put your child through surgery, but we wanted her to have as much opportunity to learn as we could."
Lauren recalls playing checkers with her dad at the hospital, and having a huge bandage on her head.
The first sound she heard with the cochlear implant was water running from a faucet.
"I didn't like it, so I threw it [the magnetic processor] away," she said. But many adjustments later, she is used to the sounds she hears.
"I can communicate more," she said. "I can lip-read well, so I can talk to hearing people. I'm more aware of sounds: the doorbell, the laundry beeper. ... I can hear things I never heard before."
She is active in the ASL club at Eden Prairie High School, where she just finished her junior year. Her ASL teacher, Albert Walla, said he is impressed by her flexibility.
"Lauren can use the phone, socialize with anyone, use her voice anytime," he wrote in an e-mail. "I don't think people will know she is deaf with a CI [cochlear implant]. I have seen her with deaf people. No one will know she is a functionally hearing deaf person with CI. She has deaf behaviors in her. She has hearing behaviors in her. I have not met anyone like her."
Boehmke attends deaf and ASL cultural and social events, with hearing friends and with deaf friends.
She has plans to get another implant this summer, hoping to improve her hearing. She's looking to the future, which could include a deaf college like the National Technological Institute for the Deaf or Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y., or one of the colleges in the University of Minnesota system. She would like to study marine biology, or education for deaf and hard-of-hearing kids.
"I like the way I am right now," she said. "I like being in the hearing world. I like being bilingual. [ASL] is a different language. It's my first language, then I have English. Sign language is a beautiful language. It is a beautiful way to express poetry, feelings, objects of the world. You can express a lot of things."