Cochlear Implants and the Internet :: Health Disability

On-line communities are something I have never participated in. I have always felt (due to personal observations of friends using chat rooms and listening to other’s renditions of their experiences) these communities can, and most often do, consume inordinate amounts of time and spare time is a rare commodity for me. Beyond the time consumption, from my observations of chat rooms, there are rarely any well-thought-out responses to the topic of discussion. In fact, often there are inane and childish retorts that just stir up the emotions of those involved and tend to sidetrack the majority as they rally against the perpetrator. On the other hand, I assume there are places where professionals can have relevant and introspective discussions, but I had never viewed, participated in or even read archived logs of such discourse. I imagine these â€Å"professional† discussions could be highly beneficial interactions for problem solving, as well as being supportive while offering constructive criticism. Since my specialty is education of the deaf and hard-of-hearing (D/HH), I have been exposed to the highly emotionally charged debates on the issue of cochlear implants (CI). I was interested in finding out how easy (or difficult) it would be for hearing parents with deaf children to receive balanced and unbiased information on cochlear implants. Could they acquire the knowledge they would need in order to make informed decisions on behalf of their children on the World Wide Web? For those unfamiliar with CIs, the simplest explanation is to think of it as a high powered hearing aid which is surgically implanted in the recipient’s head (actually the inner ear) and feeds electrical impulses directly to the brain. It does not take away or alter a person’s deafness. When the processor is on, the implant stimulates hearing. When it is turned off, the hearing is gone. Maybe a short description of the process would be appropriate to insert here before continuing. First a recess is drilled in the temporal bone of the skull (behind the ear) and a magnetic disk is placed in this well. Connected to this disk is a wire—actually a bundle of wires depending on the CI’s number of channels or frequencies.