What’s It Like for a Deaf Person

What’s It Like for a Deaf Person Welcome to a Vacuum Cleaner Battery specialist of the Samba Battery
Context is everything. Those videos are flashes of a fleeting moment in someone's life that people deem as inspirational with little understanding of what's truly happening. Like most of life, things are more complicated than a few minutes of sentimentality. As someone who has undergone the process of “hearing for the first time” twice with bilateral cochlear implants, I can assure you that my experiences cannot be reduced into a two-minute cute video.
Here's the real deal. When I say I was born profoundly deaf, I mean that my deafness was so profound that my audiologist couldn't measure it, as instruments only went up to 120 dB. Amplifying devices, such as hearing aids and FM systems with battery such as Samba JNB-XR210 Battery, Samba JNB-XR210C Battery, Samba XR210 Battery, Samba XR210C Battery, KV8 Battery, KV8 210C Battery, KV8 210XR Battery, Neato Battery, Neato XV-11 Battery, Neato XV-12 Battery, Neato XV-15 Battery, Neato XV-21 Battery, didn't help at all—I considered them more decorative than helpful. The threshold for profound deafness is 75 dB, so I was especially profoundly deaf, which isn't all that common among children. Since my deafness was discovered at 4 months, I started to learn American Sign Language by 6 months. This means that, by the time I received the first cochlear implant, my language and cognitive development were on par with my hearing peers.
Since I was an adept signer and a good communicator—you don't need a voice to connect with someone, after all—I viewed sound more as an abstraction, as one would think of a quark that is so small that you can't see it with your naked eye. I understood sound more in tactile terms, through vibrations I would feel when they placed the speakers on the floor at Brazilian parties where I'd dance the samba alongside my mother. I was curious about sound but never felt deprived because I didn't hear it. As a signer and someone who got along well in the deaf and hearing communities, I was a happy child, just the way I was.
When the Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of pediatric cochlear implants in the fall of 1990, my mother asked me if I wanted to get one. After a few questions, I shrugged and said OK, curious about what all of the fuss was about. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I simply knew that I was going to hear ... something.
What I didn't know was that cochlear implants don't truly give you hearing. They create the perception of the sensation of sound by stimulating the auditory nerve using electrodes, which have a limited range of frequencies they can pick up. My perception of sound is more of a low-resolution hologram than the real stuff.
After undergoing a battery of tests, both audiological and cognitive, I was approved to be one of the first few hundred children to receive a cochlear implant in the United States. In January 1991, I underwent the surgery. A month later, I went in for the activation,when my processor was hooked up to a large computer. My audiologist activated the first MAP, which is a program that calibrates how much input each electrode (22 in my case) transmits to the auditory nerve. First MAPs are limited to avoid overwhelming the patient, so the “sound” you get in that session is very different than what you'll get six months later. Since the audiologist didn't sign, my mother was the one who told me, “Raise your hand when you hear something.” That statement left me baffled. What was I looking for? It was a bit like searching for Waldo when you didn't know what he looked like.
In that tiny, windowless room deep in the large Manhattan hospital, the audiologist began tapping away at her keyboard. Everyone stared at me, even a woman standing in the doorway whom I had never seen before. I felt the heavy weight of expectations on my shoulders. I had to do something. I concentrated very hard, searching for the mysterious, indefinite Waldo. Whenever I felt anything, an itch or a breeze, I raised my hand slowly, searching everyone's expressions for whether I had gotten it right or wrong. Nobody gave me any confirmation, so I went on guessing. Twenty-five years later, I realize the whole thing was a show that I performed. I knew this was a momentous event, and I didn't want to disappoint.