I'm so thankful my next guest author agreed to share her story with you today. Val Blakely is the author of two blogs, one follows the hearing journey of her kids with cochlear implants and the other follows her journey with God. When Cole started his hearing journey, her blog, Cochlear Kids was an incredible source of encouragement to me as with every word I read, I knew that everything was going to be okay. I learned through her journey, that deafness meant we'd reached a curve in the road, not a dead end. If you're a parent of a child with hearing loss, I pray you're encouraged - hearing the hope in her story for YOUR child. If you are new to the world of cochlear implants and deafness, I pray that this glimpse into a different world gives you a deeper understanding of the journey other families walk, and that somehow your "life" perspective is blessed in a profound way.
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With my heart pounding, I walked into our ENT's office weighted down with burdens I'd been both blessed and cursed with. How could I ask him to try again? Afterall, my child's not an ideal candidate for a cochlear implant. Having attempted this surgery before to help my son hear, we accomplished nothing more than paralyzing his poor little two year old face. But that was a year and half ago, things have changed right? His head has grown, no more paralysis...maybe his ear deformities have miraculously disappeared. I had to try. He refused to sign. He was frustrated, we were frustrated. He needed communication in some form.
That past year we had found out we were expecting our second child, a girl. I shamefully prayed that she too would be deaf. With our first child being the only person in our family with hearing problems, I thought having a hearing child would just be adding one more to the family that showed him he was different. Perhaps she would be one more that told him he wasn't like us, and that broke my heart. My prayers went unanswered, for the time being. She had been born a hearing child.
I think the surgeon was both glad and nervous to see us again. With my hands trembling, I asked him to tell me no, and I'd walk away. He did not. "It's just such a shame, he's so smart. I want to try and help Gage. He obviously wants to hear." I watched my child verbalize with every person that he could, but his sounds were not words, and he was often misunderstood.
The doctor had a conference coming up and he wanted to discuss my son with some other top notch surgeons and see what they could come up with. He said to me, "I need three months." As he casually walked out of that room he looked at his nurse and said, "I have three months to pray about this one." That time passed quickly. I wept the night before, needing reassurance that this was the right thing to do. I must have prayed for ten minutes straight when all of a sudden, calm took over me. With every breath, confidence and faith filled me. It just felt right.
Even though my child was never a really good candidate and most doctors would have turned us away from the beginning, he became a hearing deaf child before his fourth birthday. The day his cochlear implant was turned on, his baby sister got her first pair of hearing aids. She too eventually became a deaf child and later...a hearing deaf child before her third birthday.
Yes, it's been quite eventful for these two. They get in trouble for talking too much at school sometimes and there are times I wish Speech/Language Reduction therapy existed but I wouldn't trade any of it in for having them be different from who they were born to be. In the flesh, they've learned to listen and hear, and in Spirit, I've learned to listen and hear. The Lord has certainly Blessed my family and by His Grace we can all hear.
~Val Blakely~
