Skip to main content

Cochlear Implants vs Hearing Aids - Incredible Diary Journey By Deaf Girl




What is the difference between Cochlear Implants and Hearing Aids? I kept a diary since I was wearing hearing aids and to my experience when I heard the sound for the first time in my life.

When I was the deafest child in South Africa with a hearing loss of 145 decibels, a Doctor compared me to a cake that flopped, told my mom that she must send me away and bake another one. He also mentioned to my mom that I would never talk. I was too deaf to be educated. My mother resigned from her job and enrolled in audiologist courses to help me learn to speak and teach me the languages. She sacrificed everything for me. 

I remember when I was so angry with my mom and asked her why I didn't get cochlear implants when I was a baby. She told me that she would give me a cochlear implant but the doctor told her that I will never get a cochlear implant because my skull was too small for the operation and wasn't a candidate for a cochlear implant. The doctor recommended her to get hearing aids for me. I got my first hearing aids when I was 14 months old. 

For 17 years I was using Swiss Phonak Hearing Aids. They are an amazing brand and did help me a lot with languages and to give my brain some exercise by sound waves travel to my cochlea. I felt the sound just went into my cochlea and out not to my brain, maybe very little. 

I remember how emotional and frustrated I got when I really wanted to talk on the phone. In my teenage years, I was so desperate to talk on the phone, when I experienced all my friends are talking on the phone. I was hopeless and that was before Mxit came out. I cried so many times and I did practiced on how to talk on the phone and nothing made sense to me and all the sound I heard on the phone was like "bebeboopbebeboop". I even got an FM system, it is like a tiny radio with its own frequency and it has two parts. One part is a microphone that the speaker wears. The microphone sends a signal to the receiver. You wear the receiver on the ears or in your hearing aids. I had to pretend that it was working for me, I didn't want to hurt  Phonak or my mother. It didn't actually help me. I felt bad. I even got more emotional when they tried so hard to help me and I remember when we tested the phone conversation at the Phonak in Cape Town, I burst out in inconsolable tears because all I heard was still the "bebeboopbebeboop" and that's when the audiologist told my mom that I should go for a cochlear implant.

I refused to get a cochlear implant because I didn't want to wear a little cochlea box on my chest, it looked awful and uncomfortable for me. This was the old technology model. When the new technology improved, the first-ever new cochlea implants were without a box on the chest just like a hearing- aid with a magnet behind your ear. I looked at the new technology of cochlea implants. At 17 I decided to go for it and asked my mom to take me to Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town. The Audiologist told me that I must go for a test and surprisingly I was a candidate for cochlear implants. The ENT Specialist who did the operation on my cochlea told my mom that the Doctor who told her that I wasn't a candidate, was a lie, I could have got a cochlear implant when I was a baby. Before my teenage years, I was not always keen on that idea and had to make the toughest choices but I wanted to know what is going on around me. I was the first person in South Africa to receive  Freedom Cochlear Implants and the 6th person in the world with Bi-lateral Cochlear Implants.

On my first day of switch-on, I was excited but did not expect that the sounds around me are going to be very strange. The audiologist told my family that they must keep me company because she is going to switch my cochlea on. I felt the soundwaves travel to my cochlea and suddenly to my brain like a shock wave, I was shocked, my eyes popped out and I was confused. I looked at my family talking to each other the sounds were like white noise for me. I called my mom "MAMMA". I cried so hard when I heard my own voice for the first time so loudly. When the audiologist switched off my cochlea I felt calmer in my silent world. Every time when she switches on I cried all the time. I told her this is not normal, I can't hear because I was struggling to understand why it sounds like white noise. I began to understand that my brain needs more exercise and that my brain was sleeping for 17 years. 

It was a long journey. I had to experience all-new sounds around me and a speech therapist had to help. It took me between 6 months and a year to get used to all the sounds. At 17 my ears were born.  I trained to listen to all the words without reading the lips. It is a sacrifice journey. Telephone communication became clearer for me and I could talk on the phone with my mom and brother, only with the people I know. No more 'bebeboopbebeboop"! With strangers' voices, I won't be able to follow. There were so many sounds, it changed my life. 

Every 4 years the Cochlea Aids improved with technology and sounds become clearer and fresh. I don't regret that I did not get a cochlear implant at a younger age. I am grateful that I had to experience the difference between hearing aids and cochlear implants. Cochlear Implants is the best decision I ever made. It became my best friend. 


You can follow me in social media:











Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One of the Best Getaway Places in Western Cape - Buff and Fellow

                                 I saw these luxurious Eco-friendly cabins on social media, on Instagram last year. I told myself I had to try this place with my boyfriend and had to plan our trip. It was a very nice 4 hours long drive through Garden Route from Cape Town. This place is between George and Mosselbay on R102 road, just 10km from George Airport. What a drive, it was a gorgeous drive from sunset to a big bright full moon. It was so bright and orange that we could see everything the trees and the farm hills. We were howling in our car like wolves and laughed. Traffic was super quiet except there were a lot of lorries on the road and we had to overtake so many times. It was a good drive.  We arrived at the Ultreya Farm, it is a family Du Toit Farm, Ultreya is a Spanish word derived from the original Latin meaning "Onward with Courage". It was in common use by pilgrims to greet and encoura...
4 comments
Read more

ABOUT ME - Pilates Instructor and Miss Deaf South Africa

I was diagnosed as profoundly deaf when I turned 14 months old. It was the late 80's and the ENT specialist told my mom, that I was the deafest person (according to my brainstem audiogram) to be diagnosed. According to doctors and experts, I would never talk. I had a hearing loss of 145 decibels, which means that a Boeing 747 could land behind me, and I would not notice! My mother, Annemarie, resigned from her job as a music teacher and enrolled in a course in Audiology, to reach a language to express myself. Deaf people are immensely frustrated because they have no names for their emotions. My mom used a mirror to show me my anger, happiness, fear, love, etc and taught me words for it these for the first of 4 years of my life, every experience was a language lesson and not an even a picnic or a day at the beach was only an outing, anymore. There were so many words! At this stage, I was wearing Phonak Hearing Swiss which enabled me to hear vowels, but no consonants, amplifie...
1 comment
Read more

What to do when Deaf people feel left out in a crowded room. Here are 5 tips.

*** In my experience as a profoundly deaf teenager in a mainstream school, for the first time,  I must confess that it was very challenging.  I wasn't used to a crowded classroom. At Deaf schools, you have 5 or 6 classmates but  in the mainstream, 30 or 35. On my first day at Jan Van Riebeeck Primary school in Cape Town, I was excited to try this new challenge at the  mainstream school. Suddenly I had 11 new friends  and we were always together. During intervals, w e sat together on the grass in a circle.  A s a Deaf person, I felt left out most of the time because the conversations went on and on from different angles and person s . I became more silent and lonely. It was exhaust ing  for me. I use my eyes for lip reading and felt totally ex hausted after breaks, trying to follow every word my friends spoke, to feel part of the group. After the break, it was back to the classroom and nonstop focusing on  the teacher's lips  until the end of ...
1 comment
Read more