Grendel’s Kitchen

I wouldn’t consider Li-Li’s CI a ‘fix’, just as I don’t think of hearing aids as a ‘fix’ for those who are deaf. She’s still profoundly deaf. She just has a very cool device that bypasses the usual hearing pathways and approximates sounds to some degree that her brain is just now learning to recognize. No part of her has been ‘repaired.’ But now, when her processor is turned on, she can hear.

Nine months of ASL immersion on a daily basis has given her a strong language foundation for developing a spoken language. Now that she can hear us, we can sign something she recognizes and make the association with the corresponding word or action in English!

I’m not deeply offended by the word ‘fix” with regard to what we’ve done, but I don’t like it much. To me it indicates a misunderstanding of what a cochlear implant does and I would be disappointed to know that the person using the word thinks of my daughter as something broken to be fixed. Li-Li’s deafness is part of who she is, and remains, no matter how well she adapts to this particular type of hearing aid.

I have worried that the hearing world might someday make her feel broken — but I am surprised to see that it may actually be her own Deaf world that brings her that message, based on recent discussions.