Holding Period

By Sara Biodrowski, Nebraska H&V

Our hearts melted as our five-year-old son Oliver called out his brother’s name and said “Hello!”  His older brother Owen asked “Can you hear me?” and Oliver responded “Yes!” with a gigantic smile on his face.

Just three months earlier, our family was at a bowling alley and we noticed Oliver was not responding to us. Oliver is deaf and has used cochlear implants since the age of one. I thought it was strange but figured maybe with the loud sounds of bowling he was not able to hear that well. Later on when we were home in a more quiet environment, he was still not responding to us. His batteries appeared to be okay but I changed them anyway and there was still no response. Luckily, we were able to get him into our audiologist the very next day and we were shocked to learn that Oliver’s internal devices were not working. It was later confirmed both devices had failed and he would need to be explanted and re-implanted.

We were disappointed, as Oliver loves to wear his processors, but we are so thankful we were not hindered in being able to communicate with him. Since Oliver is deaf, it has been important for our family to learn sign language since he was a baby and I’m so glad we did!  We waited the three months before Oliver’s CI revision could be scheduled, during which he had no access to sound. Since he already had a sign language interpreter in his Kindergarten classroom, he fortunately had no barrier in getting access to language at school.

It was shared with us that he may take some time getting accustomed to his new implants as he learns to listen again. However, in our observations of him, we didn’t notice this at all. Once he was activated for the second time it’s like he picked up right where he left off. We were even more pleased he did not regress in learning at school. We know it’s because he has access to sign language that he was still able to learn!

As I am writing this in April 2020, we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Oliver has now been activated for three months. Just like almost everybody else in our country, our family is staying home. Oliver is not able to have as many speech sessions as he typically would and we are making do with a handful of sessions over Zoom. We are trying to make the most of our extra time at home and putting an extra emphasis on exposing Oliver to as much language as possible. We have seen continued improvement while we wait for more speech time. (Maybe the extra one-on-one time with his brother is helping!) He has shown good motivation about the limited speech sessions, and we sit with him and repeat if needed when he doesn’t hear clearly. It’s been a wild ride the past six months but like any parent would do, we are making the best of it and doing what is right for our family.  ~

H&V Communicator – Summer 2020