When my five year old Mohammad Numaan heard sounds of this world for the first time through the newly implanted Cochlear device, his eyes were suddenly full of tears and he started crying as well, loudly. It was March 2, 2020, a day I will never forget, a day that changed my son’s life forever.
When the whole world was already under CoronaVirus in 2020, I was only worried for my child to get the cochlear implant done so that all other necessary steps would be taken appropriately and speech therapies should start as well. The device was implanted by Dr Rafiq Pampori, Ex. Principal, Government Medical College and his team at Modern Hospital and took three hours to set it right for the kid to hear the sounds of this world throughout his life by this device.
It took our family at least two years to prepare ourselves for this big step for the welfare of my son as it is the only source to hear the sounds for his whole life. He was born in April 2015, the most precious moment for our whole family. We welcomed the new member to this world though it was a difficult time as well as he was preterm, born just after 7 months pregnancy. Post birth at LD Hospital, the baby was kept for 15 days incubation and everyday was a new challenge for me to take care of my wife and the new baby.
When even after 2 years, Mohammad Numaan was not able to speak any proper words, I started consulting doctors. It soon descended on us that the speaking problem budded from the fact that my precious child was having hearing loss of both ears. To learn this was devastating for the entire family.
After hectic and continuous medical check ups at Srinagar, Chandigarh and Delhi in 2018 I came to know about Cochlear Implant for such hearing loss patients and started youtube online classes for myself to check all pros and cons of the implant as it was the question of the life of my son and finally I stood up and start counseling to my family about it.
A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that electrically stimulates the cochlear nerve (nerve for hearing). The implant has external and internal parts. The wire sends signals to the cochlear nerve, which sends sound information to the brain to produce a hearing sensation.
I consulted with Prof Mohammad Rafiq Pampori, Ex- Principal of Government Medical College, Srinagar, and a great ENT Surgeon. He is the only doctor of Valley who is doing so many implants and for us and all such kids, an angel. He boosted our confidence and educated us about Cochlear implants. He showed us all possible ways to do it at an early age to get the real vocabulary of kids.
Around 12-15 medical examinations of Mohammad Numaan were done and one the medical test (MRI) took me 9 months at SMHS hospital as he was not fully unconscious for around 30 minutes. Prof Pampori did the Cochlear Implant of Mohammad Numaan at Modern Hospital. The implant surgery took 4 hours and every second and minute I was crying and crying till my son came out of the operation theatre.
And after one month as the Corona Virus intensified its presence everywhere in this world, the Cochlear Implant got functional and when he heard the sounds of this world, he start crying with full tears and Dr Tariq who is expert in Cochlear implant device fixing in Srinagar again kept my confidence high and took one hour to make it fully functional with lower level of sound transmission by it to the brain of my son.
Now we are following all the dos and don’ts of the Cochlear device like charging its battery which takes 4 hours and keeping it safe from the moisture for the whole night. It takes 8 hours every day, thus all these new things become part of our daily life.
After all the things got successfully completed, now my big concern was to get proper speech therapies to him at the right time given by a doctor at SMHS audiologist three times in a week. My wife puts all her energy into traveling and reaching SMHS on the given date and time for the welfare of our son.
Day by day, he gets familiar with all the words, colours, speaking words, animals, and with joint exercise by therapist Ursala Bashir and my wife. Now Mohammad Numaan is able to learn and write very well like a normal kid at school. If some words get stuck we are doing regular practices to get out of it.
After one years of hectic and continuous speech therapies, he is able to understand the words, colours and trying to differentiate vowel words as well and got admission as a normal kid in Legends Public School, Sadrebal, Hazratbal, Srinagar for LKG class to meet the new challenges of life and to cherish the atmosphere of schooling as well but lockdown -2 affected him a lot.
Everyday in the morning, his mother checks the Gmail account about the schedule of the LKG online classes for the day and he enjoys studying through laptop and mobile phone with the zoom classes and competing with other ‘normal kids’ of the class.