Giving thanks on what hearing I have left

I don't do this every morning giving thanks but on occassion when I do come around to it do I realize the gift I have with what hearing I have left. And I give thanks the technology in the form of a hearing aid which has enabled me to access sound all around me. Though not perfect but I am still thankful that I am able to hear well with it. I am thankful for my mother and father for giving me my first hearing aid at age 2 progressing to the point of understanding the spoken words without even looking. It's a wonderful thing when a hearing aid enables one to hear beautiful music, the sound of thundering waterfalls as I do my hikes along the trails in a forest, the birds, my kids laughing making funny comments, and talking to friends, my sister or mother on the phone on a weekly basis and enjoying the intoxicating piano music while I play ragtime and novelty rags on my piano. There is a certain level of appreciation when it comes to the gift of sound that can only be appreciated by those who have access to it. For some it may not be as complete as others since hearing loss varies by amount of decibel loss and frequency range, and the time when we were first exposed to it.

Each of us look at hearing loss or what hearing we have left differently. I look to the positive with what I have left and cherish it for one day it may disappear. But technology and science certainly help keep that hope alive to hear through cochlear implant and perhaps someday soon the restoration of nerve deafness using adult stem cells. Regardless, the point is that I am happy that I was given this opportunity on Earth to be able to hear even when the ravages of the German Measles or Rubella tried to steal all of my hearing away while I was still in my mother's womb. Yet, I prevailed. As a hard of hearing person who is deaf, I try and remember to thank God for my good health and hearing.

Certainly my perspectives are completely different from those who never experienced what sound is like and certainly wouldn't care for it finding it of no importance. Maybe go so far as calling sound as "under-rated." I understand that but just because you may not find value in hearing sound does not mean everybody will agree with you. Lacking the experience or the senses does not make a person any less of a person than a healthy hearing person. We're all different yet equal. Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses.

But we are in an exciting time when technology continues to help us access a world that was at one time primarily reserved for hearing people only. And there are ways we can enjoy sound or music without the need to hear it through our ears. Sound gets to be appreciated here yet sometimes it is misunderstood by those who don't value it in the first place. There are those who appreciate in hearing sound and those who appreciate the total absence of sound. We value those things differently. One isn't necessarily better than the other. Just that our perspectives and experiences translate it into a value judgement.

Miracle and Gift of Sound - Deaf Girl with Cochlear Implant Plays the Piano

Here's Holly with her mother. Holly contracted meningitis at age 1 that took the world of sound away from her. By age 1 1/2 years old she was fitted with a cochlear implant. Before the menigitis Holly was exposed to a world of music in her mother's household since she is a musician. Because of the early exposure to music and sound, the quick intervention to get the implant and the continued interaction with sound, music and voice has helped shape Holly into a musically talented pianist.

In February 2001, just before her second birthday, her right ear was fitted with a cochlear implant – a surgically inserted electronic device that provides a sense of sound for people who are profoundly deaf. Seven years later, another was fitted in her left ear. The doctors played us a simulation of what music would sound like to Holly – I was horrified because it was just white noise. "Holly is going to hear music," I kept saying to myself.

I continued teaching the piano because we were short of money, but it was difficult spending time with hearing children. I was determined to try to put right what had gone wrong, to get Holly back to where she would have been had she not been ill. She had a lot of speech and music therapy as part of her rehabilitation after the meningitis and we constantly repeated words and sounds to her.

It was when Holly started entering piano competitions last year that I realised she had a very special talent. She'd been having lessons since she was seven and, although she's only just turned 10, she's already at grade five – most children get to that level only when they're much older.

She's improving all the time. I'm always surprised and shocked by just how much she can do. It's an amazing feeling to see her playing – a mixture of elation and sheer relief. Some children don't seem to have the right energy in their hands and arms to play, but she does.

The scientists who work on cochlear implants are confounded by what she has achieved musically. They are baffled by her progress and have no idea how she has done it. When she entered a national piano competition in May, the adjudicator praised the fact that she appeared to listen to the sounds she was making – her whole body, he thought, was involved in the process of making music. He didn't know that Holly was profoundly deaf – when her piano teacher told him at the end of the afternoon he was shocked.

I'm convinced that the simulation we originally heard of how music sounds with a cochlear implant is not how Holly hears it. The brain is complex and adapts to many situations; somehow, Holly has made sense of it all. She loves music and improvises at the piano, sings and composes all the time. She also plays the cello in the local string orchestra and sings in a choir.

Words of her special talent is getting around as you can see. Holly, please don't ever stop playing the piano and use your God-given talent and the gift of sound to the best of your ability. Enjoy and have fun by making the best of what you have. Since I started playing the piano at seven, I know what it was like and how fun it was to do it. Here's a picture of me at age 8 playing the piano at a piano recital. I still play the piano as you can see in my Ragtime Piano blogsite.





Holly also used her musical talent at a piano concert to help raise money for children with cochlear implants and at the same time raise awareness on the world of possibilities of what one can do with a cochlear implant, even to become a talented musican.