My story

Lissa

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http://cochlearimplantonline.com/

This is a great website!! Rachel Chaikof made this website!

This is the story I wrote that she asked me for.

Melissa, a blogger from My Journey with Nucleus Freedom, and I met each other through a Facebook group called The CI Community. For the past few weeks, we’ve been sharing our stories and talking about our life in general. Melissa is an example of a cochlear implant user who grew up with hearing aids and then received a CI later in her childhood. She noticed positive differences in her hearing with a cochlear implant compared to her hearing with hearing aids.

I’m Melissa, I’m 18 years old and I have a Nucleus Freedom. I received my cochlear implant at ten years old. My life has changed so much since then. I wasn’t born deaf but my hearing was destroyed by aminoglycosides antibiotics after my premature birth at 28 weeks gestation. I was diagnosed as severely deaf at 9 months old and got my first bilateral hearing aids at 14 months. I attended a deaf school from 3-11 years old , the class sizes were so small and you got more 1-1 attention with teachers and there was a oral and SSE policy, so teachers used both while communicating with us deaf children. I was so upset when I left because I loved it so much! My hearing loss deteriorated at around 7/8 years old so my parents, my audiologist and I decided to go through the cochlear implant assessment to see if I was eligible, after a long year of tests and assessments I was found to be eligible! I had my operation at the nearest hospital to me who did cochlear implants. After my operation I was quite sick and tired but I was so excited for my activation day! After my activation I was able to hear many sounds that I could never hear before and still today I am hearing new sounds although I’ve been implanted eight years. I am currently in college studying childcare, I enjoy working with children but it is a challenge sometimes, my cochlear implant doesn’t give me perfect hearing, I still struggle and stuff but it’s great and I could never live without it! I still rely on lip-reading heavily but I can hear people talking when I am not lip-reading but I chose to lip-read as it makes words clearer. My favourite sounds have to be fireworks crackling and the rain. I am not a music fan, I never have been and don’t think I would want to listen to music, to me at the moment it is not important. Growing up with my Cochlear Implant was great, I heard so much and it improved my speech, before the implant I wasn’t able to hear some letters such as ‘CH’,’S’,’SH’, but now I can and it has helped me to communicate better with people.

Please read my blog at www.deafgirllovesoaps.blogspot.com
 
Thank you for sharing your story with me. Wow, CI is really the most important to have for you to be able to hear sounds. This is good as long as you are happy with it. I enjoy reading your posts even if we have our differences. We are just human. Still no matter how we struggle with hearing aids and CI, we still are in the minority and not be able to have no say to have a special education for the Deaf. We are not too happy about being in a hearing classroom if we don't understand what the classroom was talking about. We need to have Deaf people in the hearing classroom too, not the only one. It is too traumatic for us to go through this crap. Pardon my pun. As long as you are happy, we are happy for you too. :hug:
 
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