What Happened in Colorado

Liam and I had to fortunate opportunity to attend the A.G. Bell convention in Denver, Colorado this past weekend.  AG Bell is an association for the deaf and hard of hearing and their convention draws mostly educators of the deaf and hard of hearing, but also members of the community and their parents.  I got to go with Med-el, the company that makes Liam’s cochlear implant.  This is my second year as a part of Med-el’s patient support team, where I travel occasionally to connect with prospective CI candidates and parents of pediatric candidates, sharing our story of Liam’s cochlear implant.  For the convention Liam and I were presenting as part of a panel on “Self-Advocacy through the Ages” talking about how Liam advocates for himself with regards to his hearing loss.  

It was three and a half days with my guy and our Med-el family.  As we made our way through the Denver airport on our return trip Liam kept saying, “I’m going to miss Colorado so much.”  I don’t think he necessarily meant the state of CO, which is lovely, but rather the experience he had there.  He’s six so he doesn’t understand that the people we hung out with for three and a half days don’t all live in that space and time forever.  He didn’t understand that the Med-el booth we worked in was torn down and packed away mere moments after we finished our shift on Sunday morning.  In his mind if he were to board a plane tomorrow and fly back to Colorado everything and everyone would be just as he left it.  

To him Colorado equals Mom saying yes to pretty much everything.  It means treats throughout the day and multiple trips to “It’s Sugar,” the candy store down the street from our hotel.  Colorado is the place where he got to be “one of the guys” with Jeff and Joel, Max and Garret.  Where Max and Garret, two older boys with cochlear implants, played catch for hours on end and gave him a million piggy back rides.  Colorado is where he could go from booth to booth collecting all the free goodies his arms could hold.  Colorado is the place where he and mom got to have a lot of fun together, just the two of us.

To me Colorado now equals three days with people who spoke the same language, the language of hearing loss and cochlear implants, electrode array and MRI capability.  It’s the place where I was reminded again and again just how lucky we are that Liam is doing so well with his implant.  It was the place where Garrett and Max and Rachel, three teens with CI’s gave me a glimpse of what will be possible for Liam in just 7 years.  It was where I got to connect with the people who know, who know the journey we’ve been on and who can tell me what’s ahead.

I’ve gotten so used to Liam’s hearing loss that I almost forget he’s deaf.  (I should qualify this by saying I “forget” his hearing loss in the same way that I can “forget” my dad is dead, which is to say that I never for a moment actually forget.   It’s just become the normal in a way that I’m not continually reminded of it’s reality.)  We’re out of the woods, so to speak, in so many ways.  Liam is listening and speaking.  Clearly.  He’s reading and writing and carrying on full conversations with adults and his peers.  This is the goal when you are first diagnosed with hearing loss.  This is the thing you are not necessarily guaranteed.  

And so it wasn’t until I was with a group of people that were a bit further ahead on the path that I realized how much I still needed to be reminded of what’s in store.  To talk to those teens, watch them interact with each other and the adults on the trip, witness their composure and their self-assuredness.  Oh man, did my mama heart need it.  They are teens, doing the normal teen thing, with friends and confidence and humor and just all around awesomeness.  Which, this side of the journey, is all I hope for Liam.

I sent an email to one of the boys, one who had been particularly kind to Liam during our stay.   I told him that we really know any older kids with cochlear implants and that I was so thankful Liam now had a role model in him.  I remember hearing a parent of another CI wearer talk about a turning point moment in their life.  Like Liam her son went to a deaf school where all of his peers wore implants and hearing aids.  But also like Liam, there were not really any older children and adult users in his life.  One day she realized that he thought he would no longer be deaf or have to wear CI’s when he was an adult because all the adults he knew were hearing.  It was in that moment that she realized she needed some role models in his life asap.

I’m thankful to be able to create that for Liam.  I’m thankful for Max and Garrett and Rachel who give Liam a peek into middle school and high school life.  And I’m grateful for Mr. Chuckie and Mr. Jeff who show him that CI wearers can be police officers or creative directors.  In Colorado we both got a peek at what’s possible still and let me tell you, it’s pretty exciting.