Donna Sorkin: Sound Awareness

Donna Sorkin began to gradually lose her hearing when she was in her mid-30s. Profoundly deaf at the age of 40, Sorkin decided to get a cochlear implant.

Sorkin is executive director of the Alexander Graham Bell Association For the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

Q. What was it like to hear again?

A. It was marvelous to hear again and with an implant you actually improve over time. My comprehension of speech improved - really up to year three I continue to improve. But right away you have a sound awareness that you were missing before.

The first day when I was hooked up, my husband and I were driving home from Johns Hopkins and in the car my husband noticed that he could just say my name and I would turn to him and hear him, and know to look at him.

In the past when he wanted to talk to me he'd always have to touch me to let me know to look at him because he was going to start speaking.

So right away you have sound awareness and you hear a lot of environmental sounds that you really forget exist. Things that people with normal hearing take for granted, that people who have the significant hearing loss - it sort of just fades away and then suddenly you forget that those sounds were there.

There were some sounds that were introduced after I lost my hearing that I heard for the first time after I got my implant. That first day when I came home from being hooked up, I went to pick up my son who was at a friend's house. We got in the car and I could hear the sound that your car makes when your keys are in the ignition.

I didn't know what that sound was, and I asked my son what that sound was, and he laughed and he said,"Oh, that's because your key's in the car, your door's open." But that was a new sound that had been introduced, and it's very high pitched and it was a sound that I had never heard before.

The sound of cicadas at night in the summer when we went outside…For someone who can hear, sometimes it can be deafening. But it's again a very high frequency and it was a sound I hadn't heard in such a long time that I forgot what it was. And we went out, and I asked my husband, "What's that?" and he told me it was the sound of cicadas.

So all those kinds of environmental sounds come back very quickly. And then, over time, your comprehension of the human voice improves. And of course its very wonderful because in my case I had been using what little bit of hearing that I'd had, but it became much easier to carry on conversations with people in a variety of settings.

Q. How did your family and friends react to your being able to hear again?

A. Everybody was very excited. In fact, the first time my mother saw me was five days after I'd been hooked up (to the speech processor)…That first week, was right before Christmas and my mom came over and we were talking on the couch, and we were talking about ten minutes.

From right, Donna Sorkin with her son, Colin, and husband, Greg Barry.

All of the sudden she started crying, and I said, "Well, why are you crying?"

And she said, "I just never thought it would work this way."

So really, it was very wonderful for everyone, much easier for me to function in a variety of settings, to hear my friends, to be able to interact with people.

My husband is in business and it made it much easier for me to go to his parties and things which I had really begun to dread going to. It made it much easier for me to work and deal with people in a variety of settings. And of course being able to use the telephone for me just has been a marvelous benefit of an implant.

Sigrid Cerf

Douglas Lynch