Wave: March / April 2010 - Winnipeg in motion

the procedure to implant the device. It was,
in Blakley’s words, “fairly difficult – there’s
some tricky anatomy involved.” Fortunately,
two representatives from Vibrant Med-El,
the company that makes the Vibrant Soundbridge,
were present to provide guidance.
An incision was made on the side of
Slykerman’s head, then a hole was drilled to
create a well in the skull where the floating
mass transducer could be implanted. In
total, the procedure took about an hour and
a half.
That procedure, to put it plainly, has
changed her life. Before the surgery, it was
mostly impossible to hear what people
around her were saying. Certain possibilities
in life seemed off-limits: She was too
scared, for instance, to travel to any country
where people spoke with some form of accent.
Now, she says, “I have the opportunity
to do whatever I want, both personally and
career-wise.”
She is also grateful to Blakley. “He’s
amazing,” Slykerman says of the doctor
who changed her life. “Without him….”
Her voice trails off. Words fail, but the tone
in her voice makes her true feelings clear.
In Blakley’s view, hearing is under-represented
as a health issue in relation to its importance.
And while some individuals may
require devices like the one being used by
Slykerman, others may be better off with a
different solution. “The company that makes
(Vibrant Soundbridge) hopes to market it to
those (with common hearing loss), which
is good, except that sometimes individuals
(with hearing loss) have a speech discrimination
problem. The device will not overcome
that.” Blakley adds that for people
who do have good sound discrimination
scores, “very often an ordinary hearing aid
is a better idea.”
There are other options for the hearing
impaired, including cochlear implants and
bone-anchored hearing aids. Both solutions
involve implanting devices to help patients
hear. And all of them, Blakley says, have the
potential to significantly improve a patient’s
quality of life.
For Slykerman, meanwhile, the challenge
is to adjust to her new sensory overload –
or, as she puts it, the sheer volume of things.
“Oh God, the world is so noisy!” she
says. It was actually “freaky” when
the processor was attached
six weeks after surgery
and I could hear, for
example, just how
loud a car really
is. But it was
also a thrilling
period:
she
could previously never hear simple sounds
such as the jingle of her security badge –
now, they have become an endless source
of music to her ears. “And the clarity!” she
effuses. “I had never heard people’s voices
as clearly before. Let me tell you, I was
giddy.”
Her life transformation was even broader
in scope than that. No longer, Slykerman
says, did she feel she was “in hiding.”
Eventually, she was able to reveal to more
and more people her secret disability.
“People would be shocked. They had never
guessed,” she says.
Slykerman is not the only one who’s
needed some adjustment. “My children
have been floored,” she effuses. And it’s
transformed her life in other ways: this
otherwise “pretty private” person is now
speaking publicly of her experiences. Last
November, she was invited to speak to the
weekly Living with Hearing Loss class
Starra Slykerman and
Dr. Brian Blakley
36 WAVE