Speaker 1:	00:09	The first thing that I experienced was denial.

Chris Carpenter:	00:14	I came up behind with some pans and I banged them together, and she didn't even flinch.

Speaker 3:	00:19	So my baby can't hear, and what do you do?

Chris Carpenter:	00:23	I wanted to be able to say I love you and I wanted to hear her say, "I love you, Daddy."

Chris Patton:	00:28	You can barely believe that there's light at the end of the tunnel when you first learn that your child has a hearing loss.

Speaker 3:	00:37	It breaks your heart. How do I fix my child?

Annie Casias:	00:42	It is hard to hear that your child has profound hearing loss, but it's okay. It's going to be okay.

Dr. Karl L. Hor...:	00:53	We live in a time that we have access to this incredible technology and the technology is so good now.

Christine Epste...:	01:00	A cochlear implant is a surgical device to help people with a severe to profound hearing loss here. What happens is the surgeon implants an internal device, like this, behind the ear, under the skin, and then there's an electrode array that goes down inside the cochlea. On the outside, they wear a speech processor over their ear and it attaches to a magnet inside their head. The sound is then transmitted from the external piece into the internal piece, and it electrically stimulates their auditory nerve and gives them access to sound.

Speaker 8:	01:36	I started out at nine months.

Speaker 9:	01:38	I started at 18 months and then I graduated at five years old.

Dr. Karl L. Hor...:	01:43	We learned early on that the children that did well, who learned to become very facile with the speech and language, were the children who are identified early.

Speaker 3:	01:53	From zero to three is the best time for language to begin to develop. If I didn't make the choice then, I would be denying him language. I would be denying him the possibility of communicating with the world at large.

Dr. Karl L. Hor...:	02:09	The state universal newborn hearing screening program was established by Presbyterian Ear Institute in the mid nineties. If you identify a child at birth, implant them by the time they're a year old, you can, generally speaking, expect that they will do very well with an implant.

Chris Patton:	02:29	As a parent, I feel that my responsibility is to make choices for my child.

Frances Carpent...:	02:35	Both my parents are actually hearing impaired. I'm considered what's known as a CODA, a child of a deaf adult. I made that choice and Chris made that choice because I feel like we really did have a true educated choice. I mean, I grew up in that world. I grew up seeing how hard it is to be deaf, how my parents were dependent on their children.

Speaker 3:	02:56	Less than 1% of deaf and hard-of-hearing kids were going to college, and this was like 2002, 2003 when I'm doing the research, and that's what we have for New Mexico. That's unacceptable. A 1% chance that my child's going to go to college, not possible. Two-thirds of deaf and hard-of-hearing kids or people, adults, rely on federal assistance because they're unemployed or underemployed for their entire life.

		We chose cochlear implants and oral language because it doesn't close the doors. It doesn't limit what Steven can do.

Speaker 11:	03:32	Oh, who's this? What are those, Ava?

Annie Casias:	03:36	If it were me, I would want to be given all the options. And so I felt like I was Ava's mother, I needed to provide her with everything I could.

Speaker 3:	03:45	They said, "Oh, can't do that. How could you make that choice for your child? Oh, that's wrong." And my response is, how could I not?

Nolan Riley:	03:53	Yeah, I consider myself really lucky that my parents decided to do this and I'm sure they were under a lot of pressure back in the day. And I think my mom did tell me one time that she got scolded by another woman about how she didn't give me the choice of being able to decide if I wanted to cochlear implant or not. But I'm like three or four years old so I wouldn't have been old enough to make that decision. So by the time I am, it would have been too late for me to actually be able to start learning all that stuff and it would have been so much harder. I mean, it doesn't hurt to just go ahead and get into it. And if I don't like it, I can just take them off and just be on my own.

Susan Revels:	04:30	There is a plethora of information and research out there now that shows that cochlear implants do what the researchers and creators said that they would do. Children are being able to be mainstreamed early on in their educational path.

Frances Carpent...:	04:45	If she wants to learn sign, and when she gets older if she wants to be a part of the deaf world and the deaf culture, that's a choice that she can make. I want June to be able to go to a hearing school and have hearing friends, but I also want June to understand and she will know that she's deaf.

Seema LaGree:	05:02	If a child is diagnosed with a hearing loss through a newborn hearing program, they're introduced to the parent-infant program. And a part of the parent-infant program is parent education: What is hearing loss, how does this affect my child, what will happen with my child, will they ever be a child that can speak, is sign language a better option for my child?

Emma:	05:31	Yeah, it helps kids learn how to read. It taught me how to speak.

Speaker 3:	05:37	The cochlear implants are a tool, but it needs to be followed up with the education or it's like giving you a computer and not telling you how to use it.

Seema LaGree:	05:46	At PEI, you have an audiologist on staff, you have speech pathologist on staff, you have oral deaf educators, early childhood educators, and an otologist that is just steps away.

Chris Carpenter:	06:01	The teachers here are doing an amazing job.

Ava:	06:03	[inaudible 00:06:03] book.

Speaker 11:	06:07	Good job.

Chris Carpenter:	06:08	They're taking care of our children and helping them. It's a holistic approach where they're teaching them through their daily activities in the classroom, how to speak and how to listen and how to respond to environmental sounds.

Susan Revels:	06:23	When I started teaching reading at Presbyterian Ear Institute, that was when I was thoroughly convinced that this was a good approach. I had tried to teach reading and writing back at my first job in New York City. Teaching reading and writing here was a completely different experience. The transition from spoken English to written English and reading written English was a very natural flow.

Emma:	06:59	At school, I like doing art, music, science, PE. I'm okay with Spanish, but it's not my favorite.

Speaker 9:	07:06	I like to listen to music.

Speaker 8:	07:09	I do like to play the French horn, but I can also play other instruments so I like [inaudible 00:07:14] flute.

Speaker 17:	07:15	My dance is doing good. I go to acrobats and tap.

Emma:	07:19	I might want to be a scientist, like an inventor.

Speaker 18:	07:22	It's so great to give somebody the access to sound and the ability to hear again. And now, they're doing more activities with their families, with their friends. They're going to meetings, they're getting jobs again because they can hear and they can participate.

Dr. Karl L. Hor...:	07:36	It is difficult for me to go back and look and see how much the field has changed and, and realized that we have the ability now to completely change a child's life. The ability to have a spoken language and the ability to read and write and use math are all determined on spoken language.

Speaker 19:	07:59	Can you open this for me?

Annie Casias:	08:02	And I just look forward to her being able to do whatever it is she wants to do without having hearing loss hold her back.

Nolan Riley:	08:08	That's why I'm on the development team for the United States Deaf Ski and Snowboard team, and I will be trying to go to the deaf Olympics in the next four years.

Speaker 3:	08:17	But he has the language skills, he has the comprehension. He has everything that he needs to be able to succeed in all aspects of life. He's going to get a job doing pretty much anything that he wants to. It's not limited because he can't hear the world around him, talk to people that he meets on the street and communicate with them using his voice.

Dr. Karl L. Hor...:	08:47	Truly of all the things that I do in my career as an otologist, the cochlear implant is the one procedure that I consider be a true miracle. It is a true life changer, both for adult and children.

Harry Hakeem:	09:01	I was deaf for 35 years. I had never heard any of my 11 grandchildren. The silence was just devastating for me. And Dr. Horn saw me and he said I was a candidate. We walked into the testing room and there were 17 members of my family there and everyone had a cell phone to the ear. And the first sounds I hear in 30 years were three little beeps. And after testing, I turned to my daughter, Beverly, and I asked her, "Say something, Bev, I could hear." And she said, "I love you, Dad," and tears were coming down on her face.

		And then I asked my son, Jim, the same thing. And he says, "I love you, Dad."

		And I said, "If this keeps up, we're going to be swept out of the room."

Speaker 18:	09:55	When I see adult at the initial stimulation, there are times where I cry with the adults because they're so excited that they can hear again.

Harry Hakeem:	10:07	When I got home, I began hearing sounds that I never heard before. Instead of buzzers on the timer, it was a tone sound. And the telephone, when I pressed the numbers on the telephone, it was a tone sound. I heard the grandfather clock ticking and the chimes were beautiful, but the garbage disposal was like a 747 in my driveway.

Chris Patton:	10:42	I still remember the first time that Emma got her hearing aids. And I still remember, we walked around the block outside of a PEI and I was holding her hand. And she could hear the cars going by and the horns, and all those types of things. And I just remember you looking around at everything, trying to figure out what was going on. That was really remarkable to me.

Frances Carpent...:	11:02	One of the things that we have observed is just this explosion in language, and not just receptive language but her spoken language is amazing.

Speaker 23:	11:12	Drop ball in the bag, please.

Speaker 21:	11:14	Okay, we'll drop the green ball in the bag.

Frances Carpent...:	11:17	I can remember thinking to myself, "Am I ever going to hear her speak?" Sorry. "Is she ever going to say anything to me?" She doesn't stop talking now. I will never tell her to stop speaking because it's a beautiful thing to hear her speak, and she's doing better than I could ever imagine.

Ava:	11:43	No ball in the [inaudible 00:11:45].

Annie Casias:	11:45	She has come leaps and bounds since she's been attending the school here and seeing the speech therapist here. And she's just... I mean, now we can't get her to stop talking.

Speaker 3:	11:57	And then they turned him on. He heard a sound, he stopped and looked around, and that was the first time that he heard. I was so thankful my parents were home. They were in town and I went home. And I remember holding Steven, and he was tiny, he fit from here to here. And I held him, and my mom hugged me and I cried in her arms, and I said, "He'll be able to hear that I love him."

Annie Casias:	12:33	PEI has been so fantastic for us. I mean, they've been welcoming, they've been soothing, they've been reassuring, they've been supportive through the entire process.

Speaker 22:	12:46	That's right, Caleb.

Harry Hakeem:	12:48	It was like wanting the glass of water and finding myself in the pool.

Annie Casias:	12:52	There's a great support system within PEI if you want your child to hear.

Speaker 3:	12:56	And it was one of the most emotional things, ever. It was hard, it was crazy, it was wonderful, and it was absolutely the right choice.