Giving the deaf the chance to hear
by Maria Kathrina Lopez Yarza
December 10, 2012
As most of you know, Med-el is my cochlear implant provider. But it isn’t just a brand of a hearing device. Having it also means having a whole company that supports you. When I decided to choose Med-el a few months before I had the implant in 2007, I felt that I did not only enter another dramatic change in my life, but more than that, I was welcomed to an additional family, the Med-el family.
A couple of days ago, I attended the 15th anniversary of Med-el. We were so lucky that it has an office in the Philippines to help people with hearing impairment to be able to hear life once again. There were a lot of people, mostly kids, with round-shape magnets with a wire attached to their heads. It is called a speech processor, the external part of a cochlear implant. To us, it is a hair accessory.
One of the things that I look forward to whenever I attend a Med-el gathering is seeing these deaf kids perform and display their talents. They danced to the beat even if they could not fully hear the sound or lyrics of a song. Some of them sang while some served as hosts. Others played musical instruments even though they did not really distinguish every pitch of the sound they made. And most of all, it was really fun to see them play around like children with normal hearing ability.
