2 days away from Cochlear Implant surgery....how did we get here?
I was so dead set against it. I had heard the way deaf people viewed the CI. I had heard of how this surgery is brain surgery (by the way it is not brain surgery). I had seen Sound and Fury and this confirmed to me not to get the implant. The way the deaf community spoke about it and spoke about the people who had them. I was afraid that the community that would become my son's community would reject him. I did not want to make a decision for my son that would cause him to be rejected by the only people that speak the same language as him, ASL.
When we applied to adopt Joshua. I planned on us raising a child who used ASL as their form of communication. Turning him into a "hearing child" was not the plan...and it isn't the plan now either. A cochlear implant does not make a child hearing....I don't have the time and energy to go into all that right now.
After all the input and research I had done....I saw Sound and Fury 6 years later. Wow...this really opened my mind. I had so many issues with the first Sound and Fury....how the parents seemed selfish and uninformed and how the deaf community was so angry and selfish as to reject someone based on their communication choices and the grandmother pushing against her children and taunting the grand daughter with hearing...something her parents did not approve of. The remarks the grandmother made sounded like being deaf was a miserable existence...it was degrading. I believe there is a huge fear of the deaf community becoming smaller and smaller as parents opt for a CI and do not learn sign. It is a real threat. I believe the negative response given by the deaf community toward CI is a desire to survive and preserve who they are and what the community is to become.
The little girl in the movie was thrilled with her CI as were her parents and siblings and cousins, many of whom had also received the implant. Everyone who received the implant was happy that they had made that choice....the mother even wished she had chosen it for her daughter earlier. That told me I have to let him try to hear through the CI.
Whether Joshua was 100% deaf or could hear or talk was never important to me. I just wanted to be his mother. I just wanted him to be communicating. I never took into consideration (because of fear of the deaf community) what will be important to my son....until later.
One of the hardest parts of this decision is a persons brain loses the ability to process sound after not hearing sound....I am told this is at about 8 years old. You can't wait for the child to decide to have CI...it is too late then.
The words I played over and over when considering CI initially were him growing up and saying "how could you have done this .... why couldn't you have just let me be deaf and happy".....after the 6 years later I could hear him growing up and saying "why didn't you let me decide....why didn't you try".
If Joshua does not want to use his implants later in life, it will be his choice and I will support that. I hope that the benefits he receives from the implant will be important to his daily life and he will continue with it.
The children in his school that are deaf have CI. I had fears myself of...if I don't get him the CI where and who is his deaf community? His classmates are all speaking and hearing...not like a hearing person....but they are not signing like a deaf person either. I want him to freely live among both communities....and of course the hearing community.
I want him to easily communicate everywhere he goes in life.
What are my expectations?
I expect him to have awareness of sound.
What are my fears?
Things go wrong in surgery and he dies or has complications that leave him frustrated or unhappy....facial paralysis, tastes change, balance issues...these are all possibilties. As with any surgery then you have the risk of death....not even going to talk about this one....God did not bring him this far for him to die in surgery...so not even going to entertain that thought.
Praying for God to watch over him.
