In 1981, Tracy Husted became the first pre-school-aged child to receive a cochlear implant (CI). She was implanted at the age of three, after losing her hearing as a result of spinal meningitis. Her frustration at losing her connection to sound motivated her parents to seek a cochlear implant for her, and her enthusiastic response to first hearing sound again with her CI was a rewarding moment for all involved.

“I remember how thrilled I was when I got the cochlear implant and first heard a sound. The video that shows me hearing sound for the first time still gets me teary every time I watch it. In that video I was overjoyed. I liked the attention I got from adults and the doctors. They were amazed that I could speak clearly and hear things that they hadn’t thought a deaf person could hear. I liked impressing them so I worked hard to do better.  

When I first had my CI, my mom helped me to identify sounds. The first time I recognized a sound at home was when my mom turned on the washing machine. She showed me the source of the sound I was hearing, with the water swishing around. After that she took me all around the house to show me the different sounds. Even to this day, I am still learning to identify new sounds.

I liked being around hearing kids because I didn’t know many kids with cochlear implants.  A few kids didn’t think of me as being any different from them. Some kids tormented me, while others treated me like a special case. I just wanted to fit in. I went through about 15 different schools while I was growing up. When my parents were going through a divorce, I was “mainstreamed” into public schools with no assistance from interpreters.

Later, I attended schools with deaf program classes and got some help in regular classes from interpreters. The best times were when I was in deaf program classes in mainstream schools. I was able to communicate with the other deaf kids with ease. I was just Tracy to them. We communicated using American Sign Language (ASL), which I picked up easily. Another advantage to these programs was that the hearing kids at those schools often knew sign language. It gave me the opportunity to communicate not only with my deaf classmates, but with hearing classmates as well. This was very important to me and made a big difference in how I viewed myself.

People always ask what it is like to hear with a cochlear implant. This is hard to describe since I only vaguely remember the sounds I heard before going deaf. The sounds I hear with my cochlear implant are natural to me but may sound mechanical or ‘robotic’ to others. It takes more effort for me to hear things than it does for most hearing people. For example, I prefer listening to classical music because I can identify and hear the difference between the instruments. While with pop music, I really have to concentrate to follow the lyrics.”