Stories
Thank you all for helping me and others with your Professional Team.
My life began with a rocky start. I could not breathe on my own. I had a severe pneumo-thorax and was in ICU for a week. Everyone referred to me as the "miracle baby". They said there was NO WAY I should have recovered so fast, or even be alive! I could have had cerebral palsy, or some lack-of-oxygen-related-dysfunctions?? Well, I am now 6 years old, and being hard-of-hearing is the only real handicap that has been detected.
My son Mathew was born hearing. When he was 19 months old he got very ill and was diagnosed with an extremely rare kind of meningitis. He stayed in the hospital for 3 weeks fighting the meningitis, and he had to relearn many physical abilities such as sitting up, crawling, and walking.
My name is Marie and I live in Graysville, Manitoba. I had severe hearing loss for most of my life and wore hearing aids. I could no longer hear well and could not communicate well with my family and friends. It was difficult for me to be a part of any conversation and had to read lips or write down what people were saying to me.
I was born in Winnipeg and except for a few years during World War II have lived here all my life. I first noticed some hearing loss in my mid 40’s when I had trouble hearing my late wife, who was soft spoken… I got my first hearing aid around [age] 50 and due to gradual deterioration had several different sets of aids.
We first came to the Central Speech and Hearing Clinic when a friend of ours arranged a hearing test for Jonathan at the Victoria Hospital. The clinic did not have a sound booth yet. It was pretty new!
I am the proud mother of our hearing impaired miracle. Our first born son, Jared, was born September 28, 2003. He was diagnosed with a profound bilateral sensorineural hearing loss a week after his first birthday. This was no surprise to us, for we noticed that he didn’t respond to sounds at home when we did our own testing.
My name is Janice... I was diagnosed with a hearing impairment at a young age however this was barely noticeable by friends and family until I reached my mid 30’s. Then it seemed to degenerate quite rapidly forcing me to have to wear hearing aids 100% of the time. Over the next 20 years the aids needed replacement frequently because the model I was wearing at the time no longer was able to do the job required.
Today is much the same as a hundred times before. Here I sit, bored out of my mind, in an audiological testing booth behind my profoundly deaf 14-year-old daughter who is listening to sounds with her newly activated cochlear implant. She is supposed to push a small black button every time she hears a tone. The tones range in volume and frequency some high, some low, all changing volumes regularly.
Our daughter, Gracie White, was born with a hearing loss. We were fortunate to find out about the possibility of her hearing loss during a routine screening test while she was in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Boniface Hospital. We were unfortunate, however, that she had to stay in the NICU for about a month due to a rough full-term birth – an experience that no parent should ever have to go through.
I began my journey to hearing again starting in the 1980's with hearing aids in both ears. My ENT was Dr. Ireland at the HSC and little was known about why I was losing hearing and what to do about it. I was fortunate that my audiogram was sent to Sunnybrook Hospital in 1994 when all seemed hopeless for my now profound hearing loss.
Brian and I have four children. Two of our children, Courtney and Natasha, were each born with a profound hearing loss. Courtney’s cochlear implant processor was turned on when she was 28 months old and Natasha when she was 13 months old. Both girls attend our private independent Christian school. In June 2008 we flew to St. John’s, Newfoundland where they were each implanted with their second cochlear implants, now becoming bilateral recipients. Courtney is prepping for high school graduati...
When Corrina was a baby our friends, family and even strangers, generously commented on her bright eyes, big smile and social personality. Whether she was waving, cooing , or making silly faces, baby Corrina was always engaging the people around her. Little did we know that Corrina had been born profoundly deaf. And though her world was full of love and joy, she had never heard the wonders around her.
My son and I came to CSHC desperate for answers. We had been trying so hard to understand how to help him. Aiden was born approximately 4 weeks early. Everything was perfect. I noticed at the age of 2 that there were some major differences between him and his peers his age.
Abby was diagnosed in 2012 at 7 years of age. Abby was born in 2005. She is the youngest of 5 girls! She was 7 weeks premature. We have 2 dogs and 5 cats which Abby loves dearly! As Abby got older my husband and I thought that Abby couldn’t hear very well. We addressed our issues to the doctors and they reassured us it was due to excess wax in her ears. When we first learned that Abby had a hearing loss she was already in the last weeks of grade 1.