Samuel was born on March 22, 2001, in Mexico City.  He is now 9 years old and he is the youngest in the family. 

Samuel was born premature at 27 weeks and weighed only 2 pounds.  He stayed in the intensive care unit for 3 months and 2 days.  In trying to keep Samuel alive, doctors had to use ototoxic antibiotics.  At the time Sam was allowed to leave the hospital, doctors recommended to have his hearing tested at 6 months. 

When Sam was 6 months old, we had his hearing tested with an ABR and results came back normal.  We were very happy after all the suffering he went through that he was doing ok.  By the time he was a little over 2 years old and his speech was not developing we started to worry.  We had him tested again and were told he had a serious hearing problem.

It was stressful not knowing what he had or if he had any other health problems.  We decided to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to have a full checkup of Sam´s health.  After a lot of testing we had a final diagnosis: bilateral severe to profound Sensorinueral Hearing Loss.

Of course we fitted him immediately with hearing aid´s but we found Sam did not benefit from hearing aids.  After analyzing the different options, we decided we wanted Sam to get a cochlear implant.  We consulted several doctors in Mexico and the U.S.A. and we heard of the excellent reputation of the House Clinic doctors and the CARE Center.

We made a trip to L.A. consulting Dr. Antonio De La Cruz, visiting the audiologists at the CARE Center and a final interview with Mrs. Margaret Winter.  Samuel’s case was carefully analyzed and a series of testing was developed for Sam concluding that he was a cochlear implant candidate.  When we left the clinic, my wife and I had absolutely no doubt the House Ear Institute and CARE Center was the place we wanted Sam to be treated.

In March 2004, Sam received his first surgery on his right ear and a month later he was fitted with his processor.  Immediately, we knew this was a success looking at Sam´s reaction. Sam was mapped and received speech therapy 4 times a week with improvement every day.

After the first year checkup visit at the CARE Center, the audiologist told us about the latest findings and benefits on bilateral implants.  We immediately started to find out more and finally decided that we wanted Sam to be bilateral.  In October 2005, we had Sam implanted on his left ear and had the same great results.

Today, Sam is in mainstream school and about to start third grade.  He is very sociable and has many friends in and out of school.  His grades are among the highest in his class not only for Spanish but for English too.  He is speaking not only clear Spanish but also understanding and speaking very acceptable English.  He loves soccer and plays every day.

We have no doubt that the best decision we made for Sam was to have him treated at HEI and the CARE Center.  The exceptional team of surgeons and audiologists including his local speech therapist and of course the every day effort of his mother to have Sam improve, has made us fell how lucky we were having the opportunity to go to the HEI and CARE Center making every day of our family life the happiest and most enjoyable it could possibly be.