Grachev
It's been eight years that every morning I wake up with the thought: "My child does not hear" - says Elena Gracheva, the mother of the first implanted child in the Kurgan region. About words, answers to questions and signs of fate ...
Terrible memories, but I need to go back in time ...
The diagnosis of "sensorineural hearing loss of the 4th degree" was put to my son at the age of 3. What to do?! Whom to flee?! How to help?! Why me?! These questions gave me no relax. We traveled all the nearby cities of Trans-Ural - Chelyabinsk, Ekaterinburg. The answers to the questions were not received. All we have received was disability and confirmation in the diagnosis. The question about hearing aids arose.
Analog hearing aid Sonata, designed to correct weak and average hearing loss, was provided to my son free of charge by the state. Apparatus for the second degree of hearing loss. What is the second degree? This is when the child can hardly distinguish between quiet sounds and words. Especially if the room is noisy. But in general - he hears bad, but he hears! The fourth degree is the opportunity to hear a shot. But not the speech... Words, by a child with a fourth degree of deafness, are not distinguishable at all.
Now I understand how many of these steps exist. And what does "analogue" mean. And then - a restless and suggestible mother, very far fr om the complex science of auditory losses, listened to illiterate specialists who insisted that there is nothing better than this apparatus!
Walking distance to the Moon
At the age of five, my son, who had been treated with Sonata alone, went to the first grade of the school for the hard of hearing. It seemed to me that I was the happiest mom in the world, that help came and here they will definitely help me! But in the five years of training, the situation only worsened. Sergey did not know the language of gestures, he could not speak. He came up with his own gestures, understandable only to us. I knew that I could not wait any longer. Then I remembered how on vacation in Kislovodsk in 2001, we met a child with a magnet on his head. So I learned what a cochlear implantation is. But there were lots of "no" in my head: we could not manage the operation financially, even if we sell everything we had. It all seemed not easier than going to the moon on foot.
And yet, I decided that the road will be mastered by the going. I clearly remember thatday: I sat at the computer, found the site of the ENT Research Institute in St. Petersburg. Has filled the form of selection of candidates under the program "cochlear implantation". Have sent the child's data and the diagnosis. And three days later, an invitation for a survey came. First, there were difficulties with the quota, but, in the Ministry of Health, we were lucky to meet a good, understanding person. She helped in everything.
And here we are in St. Petersburg ... in the ENT Research Institute, on Bronitsky, 9 .... And then I understand the seriousness of the situation. Deaf children can speak! I remember as if it was yesterday: I am climbing to the fifth floor and roaring with resentment that so much time was lost. And at this time the commission of specialists decides whether the operation is expedient in the case of my son. The child is 10 years old, he is not rehabilitated and has zero chances. I understood everything even by myself. This made the situation even more painful.
To believe or not to believe
There are crucial periods in life of every person. And for me it was a fateful St. Petersburg morning. I'm sitting on the bench and roaring .... Suddenly I hear a man's voice: "Why are you roaring?" I turned around, there was a man in glasses. I sob out loud telling a stranger what has been hurting my soul for so many years. That we came here in vain, and I do not know what to do next. He listened attentively, asked the name and said he would look at his patient's card.
Still I did not know who it was. I saw him once again in the office. In a white coat. He carefully studied our personal case. Interested mummies gathered in the corridor, they whispered quietly. My random acquaintance turned around and said: "So what? There's nothing terrible here. To Zontova, you need to go to Zontova." Only after that, mummies explained that the man in glasses was Kuzovkov Vladislav Evgenievich, leading surgeon of the ENT Research Institute. And Olga Zontova is a methodologist and teacher from God. The only thing that Vladislav Kuzovkov asked about: before meeting with Zontova my son should say at least something! I gave him my word.
The first words
It was easy to make promises. But how to keep it, regarding that my son did not speak at all? And we had only 2 days to make it. Crazy two days. I still can not understand how did we manage not to kill each other! But in the end, by Monday, my son knew the most simple nouns and verbs. He said that his name was Seryozha. It tough to remember this, but my son spelled his first words in a St. Petersburg hospital at the age of ten.
On Monday, Olga Viktorovna Zontova came to us. And, having examined Sergey, said that in our case, surgery is necessary as quickly as possible. As I remember right now: she wrote on the patient's card that the dynamics should be above average. Thus - gave us a pass to a new life.
Sergey was operated in 2006. And then the most difficult thing began ... In Kurgan, wh ere we lived, no one had a clue what a cochlear implantation was. Sergey became the first implanted child in the region. Great thanks to the teachers, Lyudmila Efimovna Kirpischikova and Lyudmila Viktorovna Tishanskaya. Even not knowing the methods of teaching children after CI, did not make them abandon us. We learned everything together. It was difficult for everyone. Everyday. Much things did not work, but we all tried so hard. View the source
