PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — I first began to go deaf several years ago when I developed Meniere’s disease, which damaged my inner ear and affected my ability to hear.
As I lost my hearing, I relied on a special device that streamed sound directly to my hearing aids while I was anchoring KOIN 6 Newscasts. It was the only way I could function to do my job and communicate to you. But outside the studio, unconnected from the device, I struggled to hear my friends and co-workers, my wife, my grandkids.
I was lost. I was living in a world of silence.
To be able to hear again, to recognize sound, to lift the veil of silence I made the decision to get a cochlear implant.
What follows is a narrative of what happened pre- and post-surgery, including the months of testing and rehabilitation to once again be able to hear.
Audiologist Lindsey Hill hooks me up and gets me ready for one of the countless hearing tests I’ve been subjected to over the last several years. Once alone in a booth, Hill starts a computer program monitoring my responses as I react to beeps and sound, repeat words and phrases.
Even with my hearing aids, I have almost no sound and word recognition. I’m not surprised. For the last several years I’ve been living in a world of silence.
“Basically, Meniere’s attacks can damage the hair cells in the inner ear,” Hill said. “When those hair cells are damaged, it’s harder for them to pick up sound coming in. Then that sound, when healthy hair cells pick it up, that’s transmitted to the auditory nerve. And that’s how we hear.”
My wife, Shannon, is by my side. She’s the only person who really knows how hard I’ve struggled over the last few years. She’d gotten me through my bouts of isolation and frustration.
Dr. Frank Warren is an otolayrngologist (ENT) who has treated my Meniere’s disease and deafness for the past 7 years. He’ll perform the surgery, implanting the cochlear device, bypassing my damaged inner ear hair cells and directly stimulate my auditory nerve.
The tiny device “kind of wraps around the cochlea,” Dr. Warren explained, “then we place or tuck the other part of the device up under the skin… then the electrodes go down into the cochlea.”
Once that is in place, then a larger device sits on your ear. One magnet outside communicates with one magnet on the inside to transmit the sound.
I was nervous as I was wheeled into the operating room for the 2-hour surgery.
After I awoke, I instantly began hearing sound — but in a whole new way. It will take a while — months definitely, a year perhaps — for my brain to fully interpret sound off those electrodes.
“In the surgery,” Dr. Warren said, “we made a little incision behind the ear in this area. Then we turned the ear forward and we exposed the bone back here, called the mastoid bone.”
There’s a pressure bandage on my right ear where Dr. Warren inserted the implant.
The bandage was removed after 24 hours and my recovery was a few days. But I’d have to wait a few weeks for my implant to be activated.
With Shannon by my side, Lindsey Hill turned on the implant for the first time 28 days after the surgery. But my hearing was not perfect right away.
“We have a long way to go,” Hill said. “The cochlear implant, to remind you, is like a six-month journey and today is Day One.”
Audiologists start the implant on low. Some sounds are audible, some voices are heard, but there’s a lot of background noise.
“Tomorrow it will be better,” Hill said. “It’ll keep improving slowly but gradually, but this is where we start.”
First, though, a tutorial: How to put it on, how to install the batteries — both of which take some practice.
Then there were diagnostic tests to make sure the implant was working properly before slowly and carefully activating the implant.
As Lindsey Hill made adjustments to the volume and pitch, I was suddenly able to hear sounds. I heard words and voices for the first time in years. It was overwhelming.
“We’re just sort of working your way through but you’re doing fine, you’re doing well,” Hill said. “Some people don’t hear speech on Day One and they can still do really well with the cochlear implant. So it’s not that doing poorly or doing well today means we won’t do well going forward. But hearing speech in the beginning is always a good sign.”
In the weeks since it was activated, Hill continued to adjust and calibrate my cochlear implant. Nearly a month after it was turned on there was a test to measure my progress: Listening to sounds, repeating words and phrases.
Personally, I felt my hearing sounds was improving — but would the test confirm that? It appears so.
“As for sound prior to surgery on that right side, you got zero. You didn’t get a single word in that ear,” Hill said. “Today you got 88% correct. That was awesome.”
There were similar results for words and phrases: Only 6% correct before surgery, 70% correct after surgery. With a long list of sounds, 11% before surgery, 83% after surgery.
Over the next few months, audiologist Lindsey Hill will continue to track my progress and make adjustments to my cochlear implant as needed. She reminded me of where I was before, feeling isolated and withdrawn.
“I would say that hearing loss is so debilitating that it affects our ability to socialize, it affects how willing we are to be in social environments, to communicate with loved ones or to go to eat or to go to concerts or to go to different social events,” Hill said. “To me, it makes more sense to fix the underlying issue by dealing with it, either with a hearing aid or cochlear implant than struggling and, therefore, withdrawing from those environments because we’re not willing to do something about it.”
I have a long way to go in my journey out of silence. There will be ups and downs. But I’ve learned to appreciate things I used to take for granted. I’ll take every day as it comes.
And I will delight in listening to the birds.
Watch an extended interview with Jeff Gianola and Dr. Lindsey Hill below:
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