Madisonville boy gets a second cochlear implant

From: Times Picayune - New Orleans,LA,USA - Apr 24, 2007

By Cindy Chang
St. Tammany bureau

The high-tech coil of electrodes implanted deep in his right ear enables 6-year-old Kyle Couvillion to watch television, recite his ABCs and befriend other children in his neighborhood. Without it, his world would be silent, and he would communicate through sign language instead of through his chirpy, idiosyncratic voice.

But because he only hears out of one ear, he cannot tell what direction sounds come from, so his parents do not let him cross the street by himself. The least bit of background noise makes it difficult for him to sustain a conversation. After three years of intensive speech therapy, his mother still occasionally has to translate for him.

At a summer camp for the hearing-impaired, Kyle's parents met children who had cochlear implants in both ears instead of just one. They could speak and hear as well as children who had been born with perfect hearing.

But a second implant for Kyle would cost a whopping $78,000. Most insurance plans pay only for an implant in one ear, not both ears, and Kyle's was no exception. So Kyle's parents, Darryl and Christina Couvillion of Madisonville, appealed to Darryl's fellow charter boat captains at the Venice Marina for help.

Soon, 20 captains had agreed to donate boat trips to winners of a raffle, who would then compete in a fishing rodeo for the day's biggest catch. The Couvillions and the group they founded, Fishing To Hear, sold about 4,000 tickets at $20 a piece, raising a total of $84,000 for Kyle's new implant.

A few weeks ago, a surgeon placed the second implant in Kyle's left ear, making him one of only about 1,600 children in the United States to receive a bilateral cochlear implant since the procedure's inception about five years ago.

On Tuesday at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, audiologist Cindy Randall turned Kyle's second implant on for the first time. Kyle, who was probably born deaf and was diagnosed with profound hearing loss at 18 months, heard sounds in his left ear for the first time.

The result was far from magical: the boy will need at least a year of therapy to learn how to translate the digital signals transmitted by the device into human speech and the array of other sounds he will encounter in an ordinary day.

"It's loud!" was one of Kyle's first reactions to the new implant.

But for the Couvillions, it was the next step towards the day when the only things that will distinguish Kyle from other boys his age are his two looping earpieces. He will begin first grade in a regular classroom at a public elementary school near his home in Madisonville next year, after spending the last several years at the New Orleans Oral School.

"Just to know that he can live independently, I never would have thought six years ago that we'd be where we are today," Christine Couvillion said.

The Couvillions are hoping to make the "Fishing to Hear" Rodeo, which takes place on May 6, an annual event, so they can raise money for other children who need bilateral implants. The group's Web site is www.fishingtohear.org.

(Cindy Chang can be reached at cchang@timespicayune.com or (985) 898-4816.)

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