Therapist teaches about cochlear implants

ORAN, Mo. -- For months Lorrie Duckworth has been debating whether the benefits of cochlear implants would be worth putting her 8-year-old hearing-impaired daughter, Torrie, through surgery.

The debate wasn't the first to come up in the past three years since Duckworth has been working closely with her daughter's school speech pathologist, Tara Mouser, but it was one they were taking seriously.

And after all that time it only took six hours at an auditory-verbal training seminar in Oran Monday for her to feel secure about the surgery.

A group of 25 parents and speech pathologists from nine school districts in Southeast Missouri learned from AV therapist Ellen Rhoades what it's like to have cochlear implants -- she has one in each ear -- and the importance of teaching deaf children to speak and hear.

Rhoades completed doctoral work specializing in the development of auditory memory, infancy and family therapy at Georgia State in 1980 and has been providing auditory-verbal training all over the world since then.

Her mission is to educate everyone on the fact that deaf children can hear and speak like their peers, it just takes the right kind of therapy -- the auditory-verbal kind she is teaching all week at Oran Elementary School.

Dianne Roth, a speech and language pathologist in the Cape Girardeau School District, said Rhoades' approach will help hearing-impaired students thrive in a regular classroom by focusing on their skills.

"It's one thing to teach a student a skill, but it's another to help them use it in a natural environment," Roth said. "It helps integrate the children, not separate them."

One part of Rhoades' approach teaches parents and speech pathologists to look at the whole child instead of focusing on the disability by determining how the child's senses interact.

"Everything is connected with everything else," she said. "Sensory integration therapy is working to get all of the systems to work together."

Rhoades suggests children have annual sensory evaluations. This can be done by an occupational therapist or by a caregiver in a school, she said.

Evaluations can be done by analyzing results of an SI checklist. Some items on the list would check for taste and smell sensitivity or movement sensitivity. One way to check tactile sensitivity would be to see if a child moves away from splashing water.

Incredible benefits

Rhoades also tried to help the group understand what it is like to have a cochlear implant.

"You can listen to the TV and sew at the same time," she said. "I can't. When I watch TV I'm glued to it because it's not an ideal situation with the background noise. I have to think when I listen."

But, she said, the benefits that come from having implants are incredible.

"When people first get implants they hear static, and it is hard to differentiate sounds," she said. "But within a short amount of time they get used to it and are able to listen and understand what they are hearing."

And while she doesn't downplay the fact there can be physical problems with the implant device, Rhoades said there won't be auditory setbacks.

Potential device problems are electrical shorts, device failure and electrostatic discharge. And, as with all surgeries, there is room for risks like vertigo and staph infections.

But Rhoades said the surgery is worth it.

"The children are not going to lose anything, they're only going to gain," she said. "The first couple of weeks you might think they have taken a step back, but they're just getting used to the implant."

Son's vocabulary soared

Liam Wisley, 2, has a cochlear implant. When he was only 6 months old, his mother, Chris Wisley, was told her child was deaf and would never be able to speak.

Fearing that was true, Wisley started learning sign language and looking at schools for the deaf. During a visit to a school outside Chicago, she came across deaf children who could communicate and speak without sign language.

"All of the deaf children were speaking," Wisley said. "My two older daughters didn't even know the kids were deaf. That's when I learned profoundly deaf children can speak."

Last fall Wisley contacted Rhoades asking for help in teaching her son how to use his newfound hearing.

For a week in November Rhoades worked with Liam and Wisley. Since then the boy's vocabulary has jumped 600 percent.

On Monday, Wisley attended Rhoades' seminar and shared her son's successes with the group.

When someone asked if people with implants can still understand tone in music, Wisley had an answer that put all doubt to rest.

"Liam's favorite movie is 'Fantasia 2000,'" she said, referring to the Disney musical.

Rhoades will teach the group her therapy techniques today and finish in an afternoon session Wednesday. The rest of the week will be spent working individually with hearing-impaired children and their parents.

hkronmueller@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128