Come out on Saturday June 8th and WODwithREESE for Sweet Baby Sloane. Sweet Sloane is Deaf and in need of Cochlear Implants.
A message from Sloane’s Mama on Cochelar Implants for Sloane below.
What’s a Cochlear Implant?
Funny, had you asked me the start of December, I likely wouldn’t have known a thing. Now, I’m reading all the things, and we have the insane responsibility of choosing a device for our sweet baby girl (there are three main brands of Cochlear Implants) What will happen is Sloane will receive two implants, one on the right and one on the left, they put the implant on either side of her skull, and then spin a tail of electrodes through her cochlea (where all of the fine hair cells are, that don’t work in Sloane’s case, due to her Connexin 26 Gene Mutation) After a month of healing after surgery (and not hearing) we have what’s called activation day. This is when Sloane gets her external processors, worn bilaterally and they will be turned on. It’s a huge day. If you want to sob, look up cochlear implant activation day on YouTube. Bring tissue. These processors magnetize to the implants from the outside. Attached to that is a microphone. The mic, takes the sounds from the outside, it runs from the implant, through the electrodes, and from there, they stimulate the auditory nerves and the brain takes in the sound. It interprets it. It perceives it.
With that being said, this will be a very long road. Lots of mapping her implants and tons and tons of therapy. Sloane has no clue what it means to hear sound, or that she will associate sound to a particular thing. Like a car running, or a dog barking, or a doorbell ringing. They turn the sound on very conservatively, and from there as the brain and system acclimates, over time, they “map” it according to Sloane and her devices.