
{"id":12177,"date":"2010-08-26T10:27:39","date_gmt":"2010-08-26T18:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=12177"},"modified":"2010-08-26T10:27:39","modified_gmt":"2010-08-26T18:27:39","slug":"integrating-into-the-hearing-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/08\/26\/integrating-into-the-hearing-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrating into the hearing world"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><br \/>\nBy Valarie Schwartz<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nMadison Jackson was a year old when her parents, Corrine and Nick Jackson of Apex, learned that she could not hear. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had an inkling at six months, but we weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sure until test results at 12 months,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Corrine said. Nobody in the family had ever had hearing problems. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Looking back, it was really emotional, very upsetting, we were questioning why it happened.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>But the same day they learned that Madison was deaf, they also began to learn about cochlear implants, a group of electrodes that are implanted under the scalp, nestled against the skull near each cochlea (the part of the inner ear where sound impulses respond to vibrations), to receive signals from transmitters that attach with magnets to the outside of the scalp. Used with a microphone and speech processor (worn around the ear), a deaf person can hear sounds and understand speech. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was pretty amazing to learn that there was a fix, something that could help her,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Corrine said. <\/p>\n<p>During the next six months, an extensive work-up was done to determine Madison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chances for a successful outcome with implants, and the decision (made easier because Medicare and insurance companies help defray costs), was made to move forward. At 18 months of age, Madison received outpatient surgery, and one month later an audiologist attached the external components and performed the first check while Corrine held her daughter. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She turned it on and Madison\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face lit up with a huge smile \u00e2\u20ac\u201c something we had never seen before,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Corrine said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Each time she heard the test, she leaned into me and smiled. It was instant and pretty amazing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Corrine and Nick are both Triangle natives, but Nick was in the service and they were living in Tennessee at the time. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When he got out of the service, the therapist we were working with told us about CASTLE,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Corrine.<\/p>\n<p>The Center for the Acquisition of Spoken language Through Listening Enrichment (CASTLE) is a school in Durham where preschool-aged deaf children with cochlear implants learn how to speak before being mainstreamed into standard schools. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an expansion of the W. Paul Biggers, MD Carolina Children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Communicative Disorder Program (CCCDP) of the UNC School of Medicine. The year-round school helps deaf or hard-of-hearing children ages 3-8, in classes of seven, each usually including two children with typical hearing, become integrated into the hearing world.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153The program is available for every child with a hearing impairment \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not just those who use the audiologists at UNC,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Hannah Eskridge, CASTLE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s director. Additionally, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nobody is turned away based on the ability to pay.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>CASTLE opened in 2001 and has a satellite campus in Wilmington, but the CCCDP provides language-development trainings and workshops all over North Carolina. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153One to three of every 1,000 children are born with hearing loss,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eskridge said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That makes hearing loss the number one birth defect\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the United States. <\/p>\n<p>Private grants and some state funding keep CASTLE services available, but money for expansion is tight. Last year when talk of a fundraiser came up, Robert Humphries, administrative assistant at CASTLE, volunteered the concert that The Nomads, the band he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been in since high school, would be playing in Southern Village at the end of August. Now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s become an annual event, and returns this Sunday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Market Street Square. The concert is free, but there will be a silent auction (visit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biddingforgood.com\/auction\/BiddingForGood.action\">biddingforgood.com\/auction\/BiddingForGood.action<\/a>) and the opportunity to make a donation. But perhaps the highlight of the event will be performances by CASTLE kids. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We worried that Madison wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be comfortable around hearing children, but she wants to be just like them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Corrine said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When we go to a public play area or she meets people, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very comfortable. We talk often about how much she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s changed our lives. She makes us more patient and understanding; she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s opened our eyes to a lot of different things in life. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s OK if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re different.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>For more on CASTLE, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/med.unc.edu\/earandhearing\">med.unc.edu\/earandhearing<br \/>\n<\/a><br \/>\n<em>Contact Valarie Schwartz at valariekays@mac.com or 923-3746.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Madison Jackson was a year old when her parents, Corrine and Nick Jackson of Apex, learned that she could not hear. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-recently"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12177"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12220,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12177\/revisions\/12220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}