Lavrenovy
Our family
I am very sociable person. But as I just begin to get acquainted and talk with people, they ask me: "Are you a foreigner?". I did not know what to answer. In part, I'm a foreigner, as I speak with an accent. But taking into account the implant in me, I'm more like an alien!
But I wanted to write not much about myself, as about my family. In addition to the common surname, in addition to overwhelming love for each other, we all have cochlear implants MED-EL. And we are four: me, my husband and two daughters.
About me
My name is Inna, I was born in a hearing family, there have never been deaf and with problems of hearing among my relatives. I have developed like allthe rest of children since 10 months. But then I suddenly fell ill. Mom was hospitalized with me with suspicion of pneumonia. They treated me for two months with antibiotics, but there was no improvement. We were transferred to the Regional Clinical Hospital of Barnaul. In the hospital, my mother was told that I had never had pneumonia, the temperature was due to the fact of hyperplasia of the thymus (an increase in the thymus gland). It was not necessary to treat me. As a result of treatment, I had a medical illness, an allergy to antibiotics. And later my mother realized that I had lost my hearing. Diagnosis: bilateral cochlear neuritis, 4 degree hearing loss. Mom explained that this disease is not treated, and the child needs to stay in a specialized institution. Can you imagine what it was like for my parents?! My dad looked at me a little and cried, saying: "Really? I'll never hear the word "dad" ?".
Then my mother learned about the technique of E.I.Leonhard. If Emilia Ivanovna reads this story, let her know that we are incredibly grateful to her! By this technique, my mother taught me to speak, and I graduated fr om a regular school with a silver medal. But, unfortunately, my mother was a teacher of a foreign language, not a speech therapist. Therefore, she could not teach me to pronounce some of the sounds correctly. Specialists, to whom she constantly took me, only advised her to hand me over to a boarding school. Now I'm 37 years old, I live in the city of Novosibirsk. I have a beloved husband Eugene and two wonderful daughters: of 9 and 3.5 years. My mother was told that my children would be hearing, but my children were born not only badly hearing, but simply deaf.
Eldest daughter
When we learned about Lilia's hearing, my husband and I had stress, the feeling that the whole world collapsed. We have not heard well by ourselves and understood how hard the life is for those who do not hear well. Different people are met on the way, someone patiently explains, someone is irritated, someone respects you, someone laughs at you.
After all, if people do not hear well, this does not mean that they are stupid. Simply there is no possibility to choose the profession that you want, you can not communicate on the phone, you can not navigate in a large crowd of people. Therefore, we unequivocally decided to perform the operation for Lilia, there was no doubt at all. Yes, it was terrible to have an operation in infancy, but it was worth it.
So, Lilia had an operation - cochlear implantation - in January 2009, at that time my daughter was 1 year and 9 months old. Lilia now hears well, she does not have to learn to read by lips, as I did in her time, as she understands the speech, supports the dialogue and her voice is good. And we are very happy about this!
Lilia is in a secondary school in the second grade. In addition to studying, she manages to go to the dance (this is her favorite hobby, she can not live without dances) and participates in various competitions. Recently, Lilia participated in the contest of readers, dedicated to the Day of Remembrance of the Young Hero-Anti-Fascist, although the place did not occupy it, but most importantly, she participated on an equal basis with everyone!
I'm after CI
Cochlear implantation was done almost simultaneously with my daughter. Then I was 29 years old. When I was connected, I was very disappointed, did not understand anything, where they say, wh ere they stomp, there was no mood at all, for some reason I naively believed that I would return immediately. Therefore, like no one, I understood my daughter, who also at first did not hear well. We learned to re-hear together with her, learned to distinguish between different sounds, etc. I was afraid to call on the phone, but I was pushed by an unexpected case: my husband Zhenya broke a bone in the foot, I had to call an ambulance, I had to call (in 3 months after the connection), while I called I worried a lot. And then when I hung up, I thought about it, and I was surprised, did I really understand everything by phone and could answer all the questions!? Since then it has become easier for me, of course, if I get a call and start to quickly give a lecture on psychology, then I'll be confused and do not understand. But I can call the polyclinic by myself, sign up, understand the date, time. For me it's a big step.
Earlier I heard, for example, the word PISK - with a hearing aid only PI, and now with CI I hear the whole word!
I spent much time with the children at home, sometimes I worked, I noticed that I began to ask less questions, I began to understand better. I talked with my mother on this topic, she regrets that in my childhood there were no such operations, otherwise I would be much easier in life, I would understand not only by the lips, but also with the help of hearing.
I want to talk about my mother, Luntsova Galina Mikhailovna. She is an industrious and very responsible person, my mother helps me very much in the upbringing of my eldest daughter, it was Mama who prepared Lilia for school, she does homework with her, intelligibly explains complex materials, so Lilia is a good pupil. Many thanks to my mom!
My husband
Now I will tell about my husband Eugeniy. He, taking example from me and his eldest daughter, also made a cochlear implantation at the end of 2010, when he was 35 years old. Zhenya's hearing began to deteriorate at the age of 2 years due to pneumonia and antibiotics (in the 70's and 80's, to save the life of the child during the infection were using toxic antibiotics, which rumpled up). Since Zhenya's mother was not a teacher and did not know what to do with her son, she gave him to a school for hearing impaired people. He initially had a hearing loss of 2-3 degrees, then 3-4 degrees, and at the age of 28 the hearing completely began to fall.
Evgeniy is also pleased that he made the operation: it became easier in terms of understanding speech. After 5 months (after connection), a new program was tested in the ENT of the ear, throat, nose and speech on the wife, and Inna Vasilievna Koroleva praised him for understanding this speech in such a short time. Zhenya is working at SIB NIA named after Chaplygin, this institute is connected with the Chkalov plant (produces airplanes). After surgery, my husband was promoted from a simple programmer to a leading software engineer.
In our family he only works and one provides the whole family. My husband is my hope and support!
My husband and I are music lovers, we constantly listen to music! And CI gives us this pleasure!
Younger daughter
Then the second daughter Nelya was born, and because of serious problems with my health she was born prematurely. And our soul was so sick: I was treated, and the child was alone in the department for 20 days! My heart was pouring. I decided to overcome my illness, because two beautiful daughters have to groom, cherish and teach to hear and talk before the wedding! I need to participate in the settings and replacements of processors. I'm not just a mother, but a mentor!
When the baby was brought home, we released. And we began to live with the family again... Naturally, when we found out that our Nelya does not hear well, we had no doubts that we would do the operation, because we see the results of our eldest daughter, see how Lily hears.
Nelya was 1 year and 1 month old, when we made her operation in the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Ear, Nose and Throat. Since we are already experienced, we immediately signed up to specialists in our city of Novosibirsk, who know how to deal with such small children. We would like to highlight our favorite defectologist and surdopedagogist of the highest qualified category Inessa Solomonovna Baskin. I just adore her, she is not only a professional of her craft, but also a strong and wise woman. Thanks to Inessa Solomonovna, Nelya is growing up as a smart and intelligent child, she understands everything literally, knows many words, is not lost in an ordinary garden, is not shy of anyone, she does everything on a par with everybody.
So, our family has passed all the tests, a special thanks to husband Zhenya, he tried so hard to support me, encouraged me, said that everything would be fine. Thanks to parents that they helped everytime they could, they took Lilya to prepare well for the mass school, and the daughter gets basically five! She has time to walk on dances, participate in contests of readers.
I also want to say that our family is bilingual, that is, my husband and I know, besides the Russian language, another sign language (I learned it when I was 18, when I entered the NSTU). The truth is that the children practically do not know SL, but, since they began to talk all the time (even though the sounds sound wrong, the main thing is that they talk all the time!), we do not exclude in the near future that we will teach children and an additional sign language! I am sure that in the future the children will be helped by the knowledge of this language. After all, only in the sign language can we convey to our hard-of-hearing friends, acquaintances, friends with whom we studied at the Institute of Social Rehabilitation of the NSTU, how implantation improves the quality of life. Unfortunately, very few people support this in the deaf community. But they are sincerely surprised at the success of our daughters!
Our family is a collection of MED-EL
There are four of us, cyborg-aliens with human feelings, and we are happy that we hear. How fortunate that our children were born at a time when such operations are being done - cochlear implantations! And this organization MED-EL enables children to perceive the world in full volume of sounds!