Derian’s Story

When Derian was born in 1999, we knew something wasn’t right. He had all these little red spots on his body that the doctors called petechiae. With a lot testing, they diagnosed him with cytomegalovirus or CMV for short. You name a test, we had it done. Heart, brain, skull, eyes all the tests came back negative. At three months of age we had his hearing tested when we were back home in Nebraska. We knew there was also a chance that the virus could affect his hearing as well. At that time, we didn’t know what an ABR was and had very little knowledge of hearing loss. When testing, it was very scary because the audiologist kept coming in and adjusting the electrodes that were attached to his head. As soon as the test was over, they took us straight into the doctor’s office to review the findings. Even though we spoke for probably half an hour, we only remember really hearing one thing, the doctor told us they turned the volume up louder than the volume of a lawnmower and Derian probably didn’t hear it. If he did hear it, it was a whisper to him. It was like a ton of bricks just dropped on us. Like most children that are diagnosed with a profound hearing loss, most have hearing parents.

The doctor in Nebraska said we had to find care at home in Colorado and he recommended we see Dr. David Kelsall. When returning home, we went to Dr. Kelsall’s office and had a second ABR done. This time we are more prepared for what we might hear. They confirmed that he had a severe to profound hearing loss in both ears.

We immediately got him hearing aids to see if they would provide any source of sound. The clinic also introduced us to Nancy Schenck. She was amazing and a blessing. Not only did she provide us hope; but she told us with a lot of hard work, even though he was deaf, he could learn to listen and speak. We spoke to many people including the early intervention team from the State of Colorado and everyone we talked to told us to start learning sign language. Being young, new parents, we didn’t know how we could learn sign language and teach our son all at the same time. We knew an oral approach was best for our family.

The difficult part was the hearing aids could not provide the volume or the clarity he needed to hear all the frequency of sounds. With the advice of Dr. Kelsall, and Nancy, we chose to get Derian a cochlear implant. Derian was four months old when we started meeting with Nancy twice a week at the Listen Foundation, where she introduced us to AVT. The sessions were a lot of fun for Derian, he laughed and giggled a lot; but also worked very hard with Nancy and at home.

He received his first cochlear implant when he was 16 months old which was as early as we could have surgery. His second implant was received when he was six years old right after kindergarten. Next to choosing the Listen Foundation to help us teach Derian to listen and speak, making the decision to get Derian cochlear implants was the miracle we were looking for. The cochlear implant allowed him to hear all the frequencies of sound and provided a very strong platform to maximize the auditory-verbal approach. In high school, Derian chose to learn ASL to fulfill his foreign language requirements and worked hard to become fluent in ASL. He uses his voice in most situations, like at work, and can sign to those who use ASL as their primary language. For us, there was never a competition between the two. We knew we had a very short window to teach Derian to listen and speak and it was best to do that when Derian was young and then let Derian choose to learn ASL if he wanted to when he was older.

Fast forward to today. He continues to study ASL in college. We could not be prouder of him and all his accomplishments over the years.

I wish I could say it was an easy road but it’s not. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication. But anything worth having is worth working for, right? I have to say, it’s probably one of the most rewarding journeys.

PHOTO GALLERY

Click on any image to see a full size photo.

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Derian nailed it!

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In the pumpkin patch

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Derian with his dad and brother

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Derian and family

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Derian with a scrabble project

Derian-ski-2

Ski trip!

There have been many times when she has announced how thankful she is that she can hear and speak. She truly appreciates the gift.

–Becky, Mother of a Listen Graduate

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