My son is getting a CI

green427 said:
IOh, and one last thing: True, some deaf people think it is a cruel mistake to "force" children to have CI's implanted. Think of it this way: All CI's have an on/off switch. If your child wants to be deaf, he can always turn it off.
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I will have to disagree with you on that. One can't bring the child back to life after the child died from meningitis. I don't understand why you and the others often overlooked this one.
 
yizuman said:
Can you play football with a CI? Can you play Hockey? Can you play Basketball w/o worrying that a ball can bean right square on the CI? Baseball for the same reason? How about wrestling? Vollyball (again about the ball vs CI) And yes you're right about scuba diving, too bad, too sad. A missed opportunity.

These are popular sports and none will be able to play with CI.

That's why I advocate the rights of a child to choose whether or not he/she wants a CI. If a child finds out there's certain sports that he/she can't play because of CI and really wants to play it, yet has no say because a parent felt that he/she needs to "fix" their child, thereby denying the child a dream of playing a sport that he/she wants to play.

When the child reaches the age of 18, that's when he/she can decide for themselves if they want that implant, along with a well informed decision of the pros and cons associated with having a CI. Plus being informed of the dangers of contracting meningitis which can have the potentiality of killing the implanted user, no matter how well medicated they are weeks to months prior to surgery, the risk is still there.

Personally, I can't understand why any human being sees a child who without a CI is perfectly capable of doing anything they want, except hear, be considered "defective" in any way, shape and form.

There's nothing wrong with being deaf.

What's wrong is the misconceptions, false fears, falsely informed that a child cannot have a happy and productive life if she/he is deaf.

Yiz
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So true! From my first-handed experiences, my hearing aids didn't make me equal in the hearing people's eyes. Would a CI makes a deaf child equal in their eyes??? Nope!
I just don't understand the hearing people.... years ago they complained that ASL is a crutch/prostheses but they tried to do away with ASL and make us use hearing aids and now CIs which are prosthesis. It seems like that they didn't complain about it being crutches/prosthesis as long as it is their own idea.
 
yeah, children do get meningitis from CI surgeries. Which is why doctors make sure they received vaccinations. Also, I heard it was result of positioner of a older CI model that they don't make anymore. I don't know if they are still getting meningitis despite the vaccination and better CI model.
 
Buffalo said:
I will have to disagree with you on that. One can't bring the child back to life after the child died from meningitis. I don't understand why you and the others often overlooked this one.
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In the course of my research, I have found that 11 people have died from meningitis, out of greater than 150,000 CI users (not including the bilateral sides of so many of them). I read about the deaths in England, 2 were immunocompromised, one had surgery (not a CI surgery) and stopped taking his antibiotics, another had suffered a nasopharyngeal carcinoma which had eroded the palate and skull base, the last had developed meningitis when infection spread from an orbit (eye) to the brain. They all other meningitis risk factors OTHER than CI's.

Meningitis is a real risk, but it is greatly reduced by vaccines as well as NOT having cochlear malformations or CSF leaks.

The death rate for children with CI's is .25%, so the cumulative mortality for meningitis among children did not differ significantly from values expected in the general population.
 
faire_jour said:
In the course of my research, I have found that 11 people have died from meningitis, out of greater than 150,000 CI users (not including the bilateral sides of so many of them). I read about the deaths in England, 2 were immunocompromised, one had surgery (not a CI surgery) and stopped taking his antibiotics, another had suffered a nasopharyngeal carcinoma which had eroded the palate and skull base, the last had developed meningitis when infection spread from an orbit (eye) to the brain. They all other meningitis risk factors OTHER than CI's.

Meningitis is a real risk, but it is greatly reduced by vaccines as well as NOT having cochlear malformations or CSF leaks.

The death rate for children with CI's is .25%, so the cumulative mortality for meningitis among children did not differ significantly from values expected in the general population.
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Well said.
 
deafgal001 said:
yeah, children do get meningitis from CI surgeries. Which is why doctors make sure they received vaccinations. Also, I heard it was result of positioner of a older CI model that they don't make anymore. I don't know if they are still getting meningitis despite the vaccination and better CI model.
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Yes and I think they don't replace the positioner in those kids who already have it.
 
Buffalo said:
Yes and I think they don't replace the positioner in those kids who already have it.
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I do believe that if you want to get explanted, you can. They were recalled, and the company will pay to explant and reimplant with a new device.
 
faire_jour said:
In the course of my research, I have found that 11 people have died from meningitis, out of greater than 150,000 CI users (not including the bilateral sides of so many of them). I read about the deaths in England, 2 were immunocompromised, one had surgery (not a CI surgery) and stopped taking his antibiotics, another had suffered a nasopharyngeal carcinoma which had eroded the palate and skull base, the last had developed meningitis when infection spread from an orbit (eye) to the brain. They all other meningitis risk factors OTHER than CI's.

Meningitis is a real risk, but it is greatly reduced by vaccines as well as NOT having cochlear malformations or CSF leaks.

The death rate for children with CI's is .25%, so the cumulative mortality for meningitis among children did not differ significantly from values expected in the general population.
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Someone on AllDeaf told me that there have been about a thousand CIers who have died from meningitis. One death is too much for me.
I am not surprised that you are looking at it thru rosy-colored glasses. You were looking at other causes than CI for those deaths. Most likely, they would have been alive if they weren't implanted, even if they have other problems.
 
Buffalo said:
Someone on AllDeaf told me that there have been about a thousand CIers who have died from meningitis. One death is too much for me.
I am not surprised that you are looking at it thru rosy-colored glasses. You were looking at other causes than CI for those deaths. Most likely, they would have been alive if they weren't implanted, even if they have other problems.
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Not even close! There have been 11 (as of the paper I read in 2004). NOT EVEN CLOSE TO A THOSAND.

http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/1/55.full.pdf

Those aren't rose colored glasses, those are the facts.
 
I agree, Buffalo. I would not want my child to be one of those .25% just because he is deaf.
 
The meningitis rates are higher in the CI population than those with typical hearing, but the risk is higher for ALL deaf people with cochlear malformations as well. But the death rate for children is no higher.
 
Buffalo said:
I can't find it in here. The ADer is from Australia and she is a CIer. I haven't seen her here in a long time. She is the one who told me. I don't know where she got the number.
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Well, the number is far from true. Read around, it is a much lower.
 
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