Summer in Colorado

About six months ago, we attended a camp in the mountains of Colorado, for families of CI kids.

We had the BEST time. Michelle made some great friends and I spent the week visiting with parents of CI kids. My boys, Matthew and Bradley, met other kids their age, some with implants and some without. This was my first experience of seeing kids with bilateral (2) cochlear implants.

Looking Back

Welcome to my first official blog! I have a 13 year old daughter, Michelle, who is delightful. (yep, I'm biased!) This blog is really about her and the journey she's had in her short 13 years.

In a nutshell, here's her story, written by me, about 5 years ago. Michelle was diagnosed with a bilateral profound hearing loss at 9 months of age. As far as we know, she has been deaf since birth. She wore hearing aids until age 2, when we began to explore a cochlear implant as an option to help Michelle hear.

No one in our family is deaf, and although we learned to sign and communicate with her from the start, we wanted to give her the gift of sound, if at all possible. Michelle received a cochlear implant in October of 1997 and was "turned on" in November. We have never looked back. She has done quite well with her implant and is in a regular 7th grade classroom. She's a good student, has great friends and has a warm heart.