Health

A sound gift

Wilkes-Barre man regains hearing after receiving cochlear implant

By Geri Anne Kaikowski gkaikowski@timesleader.com
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The sharp click of high heels on linoleum.

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James O’Meara Sr. can now hear the television after his cochlear implant surgery. O’Meara was born with a mild form of osteogenesis imperfecta and eventually lost his hearing from the disease.

AIMEE DILGER Photos/The Times Leader

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A closeup of the cochlear device.

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The chirping of crickets after sunset.

The ticking of a car’s turn signal.

These are sounds that we take for granted every day.

But these are little sounds with big meaning for James O’Meara. That’s because O’Meara, 52, of Wilkes-Barre, is regaining his hearing.

It’s not a medical miracle, but, yet again, you might say it is.

“Hearing is the only sense that we can restore medically,” said his surgeon, Dr. Michael Ruckenstein, Department of Otorhinolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, University of Pennsylvania Medical Center, Philadelphia. “Sight, smell, taste and touch can’t be restored, but this can.”

The return to the world of sound is thanks to a cochlear implant, a small, complex electronic device that helps children and adults with little or no hearing pick up sounds.

“At times, it’s almost too much sound, but I’m learning to sort through it,” said O’Meara in a series of interviews conducted over the course of three months — from the beginning of his surgery to his recovery — through e-mail and spoken conversations.

He is understandably a little overwhelmed both physically and emotionally by his re-entry into the hearing world.

“It’s incredibly emotional at times,” said the Wilkes-Barre man. “I have seen people’s eyes well up with tears when they realized I could hear them for the first time in years. It’s extremely moving to see people affected that way. I feel like I have been given a gift, and that I have to share that gift with as many people as I can.”

O’Meara was born with a mild form of osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a disease that affects the body’s production of collagen. It is often referred to as brittle bone disease, since those who have it fracture easily. Type I OI often leads to hearing loss. His father and his aunt also had the disease and both suffered hearing loss.

O’Meara recalls beginning to lose his hearing in 1972-’73 while in the 10th grade. He began wearing his first hearing aid in 1985, and a second one about five years later.

He re-entered the hearing world in August after undergoing a cochlear implant in his right ear at the Hospital of the University of Philadelphia.

Going deaf was difficult for O’Meara as he once played in a rock band. O’Meara recalls the struggles he faced learning lyrics to cover a song. “These were the old days when you couldn’t Google for lyrics,” he said. “You bought the album. If you were lucky, the lyrics were printed inside. But most of the time you learned by listening and memorizing what was being sung. By the time I was in my early 20s, however, I couldn’t always pick out the words. They ran together in a jumble. So, that’s how I sang them, a slurred jumble of words or nonsense syllables. No one ever noticed because it was rock ’n’ roll. Slurred jumbling words were part of the allure.”

Soon though, O’Meara had to leave the music world behind. Even listening to music became a difficult experience, especially emotionally. He struggled to hear what he couldn’t play any longer.

Eventually, hearing aids became less effective. “I reached a point where carrying on a conversation with anyone was problematic and using a telephone impossible,” he recalled.

Ann Marie O’Meara, his wife of 25 years, has noticed a dramatic personal change in James. “He’s gone from being in a bubble and isolating himself to being able to participate in family functions,” she said. “He really had no social life. He didn’t want to go out. And whenever we went out together, I acted more or less like a translator telling people to talk slow and helped him get through a conversation.”

O’Meara never stopped working as an information systems supervisor for North Star Foodservice (owned by US Foodservice) in Pittston, but noted that teleconferences and group meetings became more difficult to handle.

Re-entry into the hearing world is probably as gradual a process as losing one’s hearing. But through it all, O’Meara has maintained his determination, composure and his sense of humor.

O’Meara writes fictional stories on his blog and Internet Web site ( www.desktopdynamo.com), where he also posts information about his surgery. One of the photos on the site shows his spirit and sense of humor as he sits in a hospital with a surgical net on his head and playfully sticks his tongue out at the camera.

“A great deal of pressure vanished from my life the moment the processor was turned on,” he recalled. “I am a far more relaxed person. I’m not on edge all the time, wondering how I’m going to function in certain situations.”

O’Meara’s hearing had been rapidly decreasing recently. O’Meara’s family physician, Dr. James Bruno, suggested trying a cochlear implant.

Ruckenstein reviewed his medical tests and determined he was a successful candidate for a cochlear implant in his right ear.

One of the hearing tests determines if hearing aids are beneficial for the implant candidate, since the implant surgery makes it impossible to ever use traditional hearing aids again.

The success rate is high for the one-hour outpatient procedure, Ruckenstein said, and there are minimal risks involved.

A series of 24 electrodes was implanted in O’Meara’s cochlea. A coil with a magnet was implanted under the skin above his ear. A processor, which resembles a hearing aid, also has a coil which attracts magnetically to the coil under his skin. The processor sends signals to the electrodes, which stimulate the auditory nerve and allow him to learn to hear again.

O’Meara was deemed a promising candidate because his deafness was recent, which increases the likelihood that the auditory nerve was still active. This also signifies that he has auditory memory, meaning that he knows what things are supposed to sound like and he is “postlingually deafened,” which means that he went deaf after already acquiring language skills.

The cochlear implant system works largely on sound memory. “Some things I recognize right away, but some I don’t,” said O’Meara, “Or my brain confuses it with something else.”

He tells the amusing story of being in his car one day and thinking that he heard bacon frying. “I was baffled until I realized that it was raining, and what I really heard was rain hitting the roof of the car,” he recalled.

O’Meara is also experiencing a little difficulty with people’s voices, joking that “they sometimes start out as chipmunks.” If the man knew the person’s voice before he went deaf, he can gradually recognize it as his brain adjusts and interpretes the signals from the processor as their voices. However, if he is listening to someone who he just met recently, O’Meara says the voice is difficult to interprete and the person sounds mechanical or “like they’ve been inhaling helium.”

He has been traveling extensively to Philadelphia for follow-up medical visits, which involve fine-tuning and programming on the processors. A recent visit increased volume and added a channel programmed for music, which allowed O’Meara to listen to music on the car radio again. “It was a real thrill to be able to pick out some instruments,” he said. “But the high point for me was when a barbershop quartet performed. It was the first live music I’d heard in perhaps 15 years, and I was nearly overwhelmed with emotion.”

While O’Meara said that he doesn’t plan a return to performing music, he’s looking forward to listening to it again. “I told Dr. Ruckenstein that if I could listen to the second side of The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ again, that would be paradise for me,” he said.

He celebrated his birthday Nov. 5 not only with the gift of hearing, but with another present — the Beatles boxed set of mono recordings. “That’s 185 songs to learn to hear again,” he said excitedly.

“I came in the house the other day and the CD player was blaring,” said his wife. “It was James playing all his Beatles music. It’s neat to see him getting to experience it all again. The past few months were an emotional rollercoaster. We didn’t know what to expect. And I didn’t want him to be disappointed if things didn’t work out. But when they activated the processor and we both realized he could hear me, we became teary-eyed.”

O’Meara hopes to start a local support group for cochlear implant recipients or to get involved with the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. He has begun to write a blog at the Cochlear.com Web site at www.cochlearcommunity.com/jimbolions.

“I’ve been given a tremendous gift ... a miracle,” he said. “It’s time to start giving back.”

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