E.B. Writers of Dallas

Wayne Epperson, correspondent | publication pending

Sarah Florence’s voice conveys a blend of excitement, compassion and optimism as she tells of the people she encounters in her chosen profession. If one word could describe her work, it would be altruistic.

Ms. Florence is an audiologist and speech-language therapist who specializes in helping hearing impaired children on their journey to a life of sound and communication.

She works at the University of Texas at Dallas Callier Center for Communication Disorders and was there in April when 15-month-old twin boys from Lubbock heard sound for the first time.

Hunter and Haydn Corker, fraternal twins sons of Bobby and Karen Corker, were born deaf and had received cochlear implant hearing devices the month before during surgery performed by Dr. Peter Roland at Children’s Medical Center of Dallas. The family was at the Callier Center that April day for the implants to be activated in an initial stimulation process called mapping, or programming.

The twins each had received a single cochlear implant that consists of an external system of a microphone, speech processor and transmitter, and an electrode array surgically implanted into the cochlear of their left inner ear. The implant bypasses the outer and middle ear functions and sends electronic sound stimulation directly to the remaining auditory nerve fibers then to the brain where it is interpreted as sound.

During mapping, each channel, or frequency range, of the multi-channel device was first checked with an electronic beep to assure the sound level was not creating an uncomfortable sensation for either child. “We start really softly so we can come up very slowly as we go through the different pitches. We’re looking for that first response to the beeping,” says Ms. Florence.

“Once we are finished with all the channels, that’s when we turn the program on. So, they are not hearing anything in the room until that point. We try to make sure the room is really quiet, because there’s lots of environmental sounds that we take for granted that they have never heard before. When we initially turn on the processor and the sound, they can be overwhelmed,” she says.

After the child gets used to the environmental sounds, the audiologist begins making distinct sounds like tapping on the table or softly clapping her hands in a pattern so the child can detect those from the undercurrent of background noise.

Mrs. Corker says her son Haydn, upon first hearing the sounds, looked around grinning with an expression of, “Hey, what is this? This is kind of cool.”

Of such monumental moments, Ms. Florence says: “It’s really exciting when someone is in for their first day of hearing. We love what we do, because we are with the families for such an important day in their children’s lives. We wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Ms. Florence’s outlook is typical of fellow audiologist Janee Gisclair, speech-language pathologist Melissa Sweeney and the other 100 or so professionals and support personnel at the Callier Center.

To date, employees of the center have worked with 220 children and adults who have received cochlear implants since the program started in 1991, says director Ross J. Roeser, Ph.D. The center and its partners, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, comprise the North Texas Cochlear Implant Program.

“The numbers of children we are seeing is increasing because the criteria for implants are becoming less stringent. When we first started doing the implant, it required that the child have virtually no hearing in either ear – profound deafness. That’s been lowered to where we have children who have severe deafness. With the criteria being relaxed and the performance of the devices improving, we expect the numbers to increase,” he says.

The typical first-year implant costs, which includes the device, hospitalization, surgery and rehabilitation, ranges from $45,000 to $50,000. The implant device alone costs from $20,000 to $25,000.

The Callier Center is supported by the United Way, donations and direct patient/​third-party payments. The Crystal Charity Ball, which provided seed money to start the Callier implant program, recently donated $625,000 to the center.

The change that occurs in client families at the center is what motivates speech-language pathologist Sweeney.

“At one time their child has a profound hearing loss and is probably not going to develop spoken language. But then they are given this cochlear implant that gives them access to sound. We teach them the awareness of sounds and the goal is to give them listening skills that they are going to be able to use to develop spoken language like children with normal hearing do,” Ms. Sweeney says.

Mrs. Corker says when her babies were diagnosed as being deaf she and her husband felt devastated “because you have all these dreams and hopes for your child and now they can’t have those things.”

That devastation was replaced by hope after the cochlear implants. “Life is going to be just fine. Hunter and Haydn can still have a very beneficial, successful life.

Mrs. Corker says there are no auditory-verbal therapists in her hometown of Lubbock, where an estimated 15 children have cochlear implants. Many have been aided in therapy by Brenda Bliss, a Dallas independent audiologist. So, Mrs. Corker is going to have Mrs. Bliss work with her boys monthly before they return to the Callier Center for periodic progress assessments by audiologists Florence and Gisclair.

Mrs. Bliss, who trained in Los Angeles under Dr. William F. House, the developer of the original cochlear implant device, started her Dallas practice in 1992. She saw the Corker twins for the first time June 9.

“The kids did great,” Mrs. Bliss says. She is considering traveling to Lubbock every few months to work with the Corker twins and other implant children. “I would love to be able to do that because there is no auditory-verbal therapist out there and they need it.”