This article is a follow-up to one I wrote earlier in the year, and if you want to read it first, feel free!

Being deaf is interesting, however, having a cochlear implant is even more interesting. I wouldn't go so far as to call myself a cyborg, but I definitely depend on my cochlear implant to get around in life. If I did not have it, I know I would be a very different person today. I'm glad my parents made that decision for me when I was two years old!

Let's cover some basics of cochlear implants.

In order to get a cochlear implant, you have to be absolutely, completely deaf. Zero hearing. Zero auditory input. My parents found out I was deaf when I was 18 months old, but they had to do further testing to see how deaf I really was. I turned out to be as deaf as a doornail. My mother recalls holding me on her lap while wearing protective headphones as the audiologist played earth-shatteringly loud sounds. I sat there, playing with stuffed animals, oblivious to the noise. This phenomenon is called "threshold sound", which measures the quietest and loudest sounds someone hears. If I didn't hear the loudest possible sounds, there was no a chance of me hearing a whisper.

After determining just how deaf you are, you must go through extensive testing beyond just auditory input. We tried hearing aids for a couple months, even though we knew they probably wouldn't work. It was merely for insurance purposes.

I continued playing with my toys, completely oblivious to the world of sound. I knew there was something that my ears didn't know, because I saw people moving their lips. I would become frustrated that I couldn't get the same effect when I moved my lips.

Mom and Dad discovered the cochlear implant when I was about two-and-a-half years old, and decided that this was ultimately the best route for their daughter. They looked into sign language, but desperately wanted me to be able to have the biggest circle of communication possible. With a large extended family, everyone would have to learn sign to communicate with me. That wasn't a problem for anyone, but they all wanted me to be able to do things in the world of sound. Back then, the world was not as open to deafness as it is now, in my opinion and from my memories.

So they met with the audiologists and surgeons and set my surgery for mid-April 1995. They shaved one entire side of my head with a huge horseshoe-shaped incision (to this day, I still don't have hair along the lines of the scar) and inserted a cochlear implant. I was among the first two thousand children implanted in the United States.

The contraption otherwise known as a cochlear implant is usually a small metal computer with a long, skinny tail that has 22 electrodes on it. This tail is carefully inserted into your cochlea and, when the implant is activated, sends signals to the hearing section of your brain. The electrodes help my cochlea along. One of the theories as to why I'm deaf is because there may not be cilia (small hairs that sway with sound) in my cochlea, and the electrodes take the place of the cilia.

The second part of a cochlear implant is the processor, an external device worn on the head. It does exactly what you'd think it does: it processes noise. The coil holds to the internal implant via a very, very strong magnet that works through muscle and bone (Don't go sticking it onto a fridge. You'll have quite the time getting it off.) The external processor is also arguably the most important part of a cochlear implant, because without it, there's no point to having the 22 electrodes inserted in your cochlea.

Once you've got a cochlear implant inside your head, you must take on thousands and thousands of hours of speech and auditory therapy. My parents labeled quite literally everything in our house, to help me understand that objects had names. They talked more than most parents do, verbalizing even tiny things like "I'm pouring batter in the bowl," or "I'm going to mix the batter after that."

My brother also played a role in helping me learn to use my new hearing. When most boys wouldn't want their sisters touching their toys, he allowed me to play with his stuff (provided he was in the room, of course) and talked about what the toys did. Over the course of months and years, garbled noise and spikes in loudness and quietness became comprehensible to me.

My first word came when I was four years old, and it was "wait". Which is ironic, because that's all we had been doing was waiting for me to talk. When I think about what my mother felt, it moves me to tears. The first word is important to all mothers, but it is even more important when your child speaks at the age of four. The next couple of years led to an explosion of language and communication.

I remember the floodgate of words. It was as if someone unlocked a whole world within me, and I could share that world with everyone now. I talked constantly, in broken sentences and pointed at things I knew the words of.

I only spent two years at a deaf education school, which shocked many of the teachers. The average for most kids at the time was five to six years in a deaf education school, and then mainstreaming to a hearing school. Near the end of my time there, I resembled most hearing kids. I had caught up in reading, math, science—basically just about everything important for a seven-year-old to know.

It was still challenging to be at a hearing school, but I was happy to be in a place where I was able to be challenged. My deafness did not hold me back one bit.

Over the years, my hearing has improved as a result of new technology and better algorithms crafted by audiologists. The only barrier for me now is insurance companies! My latest upgrade happened after years of having the same external implant. My Nucleus Freedom, a solidly built processor that did its best, fizzled out after being used for nine years. I was a little sad, because that implant had heard so many important parts of my life, but I was greatly excited to receive a Nucleus 6.

That new implant has literally changed my life. I hear rain now as actual droplets instead of a buzzing noise. I can hear whizzes of revolving doors when before, I didn't even know they made a noise. I can listen in noisy settings as if my friends are speaking next to me when they're actually at the edge of the table. If my new processor can do that now, I can't wait to see what new technology does in the future!