Melanie O. - Cochlear Volunteer
- ProfileWho Has Hearing Loss: I do
Hearing Loss Type: Sudden Loss
Hearing Loss Cause: Meningitis
Device: cochlear
I am a late deafened adult who had normal hearing prior to my hearing loss. I had a sudden hearing loss about five years ago due to bacterial meningitis. As I recovered I was left with a profound bilateral hearing loss.
Living in Illinois at the time and a Speech-Language Pathologist by profession, I received pertinent and timely information regarding the necessity and benefit of a cochlear implant if I wanted to hear again. I had my first implant surgery about seven weeks after my illness and was activated three weeks later. While I heard speech and understood it in the audiologist's office, I still needed to practice listening; I needed to get used to hearing with the "cochlear implant".
After a few months, my audiologist encouraged me to consider a second implant. I received my second implant eight months later. At this point I had returned to work as a public school speech-language pathologist with some assistance from FM devices, Phonak's handimic, and a CapTel phone.
Currently I use both a land line and a cell phone with only some mild interferences. My husband and I retired to Arizona where I became active in the Hearing Loss Association of America and Cochlear's Volunteer Awareness Network.
I continue to pursue some part-time work as a Speech-Language
Pathologist, and I have stretched my interest to providing cochlear implant recipients, both children and adults, with information about a variety of aural rehabilitation materials and websites available for practice for hearing and listening, including all the great material available on the Cochlear website.
