And Happy Friday.
-
Search It!
-
Recent Entries
- All good things etc.
- A little more reading with Sunday’s column…
- You should go hold a baby.
- Every Tuesday at 11:45 a.m….
- Jesus occupied Jerusalem
- Black Friday madness!
- Perhaps the most awesome request for donations, ever
- Tax the very rich, right now
- Sometimes? You just have to say no.
- Check out this Baptist minister’s take on environmentalism:
-
Links
Not so fast. The media loves “awww” stories like this but–
The baby, whose body is still fragile, was subjected to very invasive surgery. Hey, the baby in the video can’t even hold its head up!
Inserting a cochlear implant bypasses the outer and middle ear, and DESTROYS whatever hearing the baby may have had.
The operation is, in general, irreversible.
CI’s last about ten years. What happens when it’s “spent?”
Regular checkups and speech therapy are needed for life. After all, there’s a medical device implanted in one’s body, in the neural system!
A Deaf person with a CI is still a Deaf person.
Notice that the baby is looking intently at the mother and mimicing her smile. Normal behavior for that age, regardless of the hearing status.
CIs in adults are an entirely different matter, as the person makes the decision. Babies have no choice in the matter.
I wondered if you’d feel this way. I know there’s some discussion about CIs, and that there is a strong movement in the Deaf community to not mess with these.
The baby is eight months old. Wonder why he can’t hold up his head.
Basically most adults in the Deaf community have no problem with teens and adults having this elective surgery.
It’s the innocent babies that we worry about.
There is a significant “failure rate” for infants and children who are implanted. Some implanted persons, when they get older, do not use them.
I have a friend who has had a CI for a long time. He says that he must request manual screening at airports. If he goes through the detector, he says it’s like someone hitting him on the head with a frying pan.
Many of what Jay said is right,, I am deaf with CI and I too have some reservation about implanting babies.
Oh Jay, newer CIs preserve some hearing nowadays. I know this because I still have what little hearing I had in my CI ear when my implant is off. They said it has to do with soft tip on the coil. Softer tips reduce damage to hair cell.
That is interesting. How sad, that failure rate.
Here’s my complaint about CIs: Insurance companies will cover those for the bilaterally deaf. Generally, most will not cover the similarly expensive surgery and technologies like Bone Adhered Hearing Aids (BAHA) for the single-sided deaf like me…even when we already have significantly less than 100% hearing and discrimination in the remaining ear.
In very noisy environments (supermarkets on the weekend) I might as well be fully deaf since I lose the ability to discriminate sound or have any sense of the direction it is coming from.
On the other hand, I am happy for anyone that finds CIs or other devices improve their lives.
What do you need to hear in a supermarket, anyway?
Oh, I see. You want to know if the Rice Krispies cereal is fresh. Snap! Crackle! Pop!
LOl,, good one jay. As Tod said, improved qualify of life,, i have to agree with him,, after I got my CI, my self esteem skyrocketed.
some day,, I shall tell you a story of how I caught my daughter swearing at me! she never been so shocked and embarassed!
I’d like to know when someone is talking to me when I can’t see them. Plus, some of this is new enough that I can’t read lips yet.
Prior to surgery, I could at least tell there was a sound on my left side.
Believe you me, lipreading is vastly over-rated.
The numbers 8, 9 and 10 look the same. Red and green. Say “suffer much!” to someone silentl and in an angry way, and you might get a knuckle sandwich.