Anasooya's Story Begins

Anasooya is my elder brother's daughter and was born in Sept 2004. A cute healthy baby girl and she brought a lot of happiness along- just as much any third generation newborn would bring to a family. Three months later another cute little member joined our family, my eldest brother's daughter Meenakshi. So we now have 2 little girls in our family almost of the same age doubling the joy of our lives.

A year later both kids started walking and started making as much gibberish noise they can and all the mischief they could manage at their age. Anasooya was very active and energetic and she was the darling of the entire family. She used to imitate all the expressions and gestures that the adults would do and most of the communication happened this way and we were so happy that she is very communicative at this age. She was very intelligent and very observant. She used to be very much particular about keeping things in their place and used to complain if anything is misplaced. Well, this was definitely much more than what we would've expected from a one year old. That’s when the younger of the two-Meenakshi started talking meaningful words and our attention now turned towards Anasooya. One of our neighbors, a medical doctor once noticed that she is not responding to car horns and was a little suspicious and recommended us to get a checkup done from an ENT hospital. Even at this stage it was very difficult for us, or we didn't know how to find out if she's really not responding to sounds.


That day finally arrived when we took her for the detailed medical checkups and finally we got the results. I was not present when the doctors told her parents about this and don't know how they actually responded to this. But it must have been really devastating for them. However they were so strong mentally and could withstand the truth that was heard. But it was shocking for the entire family and so was for me. The first question every one asked when they heard about this was "Ok, what best can be done now?" and "A Cochlear Implant" was the answer. That is when I first heard about CI. However I also heard that the cost would be so high. The estimated cost was about 8-12 Lakhs Rupees (~20000USD). I believe this is one among the costliest medical devices, possibly more expensive than many life-saving devices. But for us this was nothing shorter than life saving as a whole life is ahead for Anasooya and she has just started her journey without hearing much about how the future sounds like.

I spent the next few days entirely on searching the internet for gathering as much information about CI. By the end of my preliminary search I got a fairly good idea of the cost and effectiveness of CI and I was quite convinced. I passed on all the information that I got to my family. The idea was to get the surgical implantation done as early as possible. The ideal age for an implant would be before the kid is 2 years old as that is when most of the language development occurs. Earlier the better! So we decided to get the surgery done almost immediately as Anasooya was 1.5 years old by this time. The next biggest question was how to arrange for such a huge amount of money to meet the cost of the surgery and the equipment. Fortunately we could find the sources from family property and also a couple of personal loans. We now got answers to two of the biggest questions. The other question that remained was whether or not to have the implant on both ears. A quick search on Google and I found that this was not yet proved to dramatically improve hearing than a single implant. Moreover, it would have doubled the cost and in that case things would be really tough for us. An important and very helpful thought that came up at this stage was to leave room for future improvements in technology. Who knows in another 20-25 years or may be even later a new technology might come which may be a better alternative than CI! However, we wanted to buy the latest and the most advanced model of the implant available. The suggested device was from Cochlear. We decided to go ahead with a single cochlear implant and the date was fixed for the surgery - 5th May 2006.

We have been consulting with Santhwana ENT Hospital at Trivandrum, just a kilometer away from home. We chose this hospital for the primary reason of being so close to our house and also for the fact that this is a hospital with so much good reputation and so many success stories to share including prior cochlear implants. Before the surgery there were many sessions were Anasooya and her parents could meet the other kids with the implant. Now, that gave us all some confidence. The chief surgeon at the hospital was Dr. John Panicker who is an eminent ENT surgeon with a very good reputation across the country. Dr. Panicker told us that he would be accompanied by Dr. Manoj of the Malabar Institute of Medical Science (MIMS) who has a specialization in cochlear implant and would be doing the surgery. My brother met both of them several times before the surgery.

So we were all set and the date of surgery arrived. I was not present in the hospital at the time of surgery but got the updates from my father. The initial decision was to implant the device in her left ear. Then in the detailed tests done just before the surgery it was found that her right ear has better responsiveness. The doctors suggested that we should go ahead with the implant on the right ear. We agreed. The surgery was very much successful and it was a great relief for all of us including the surgeons. This is because there were previous incidents when the kids undergoing surgery have waked up from anesthesia and have shaken their head during surgery. Fortunately, Anasooya responded quite well and the surgery was very smooth. The post surgery tests were also found to be successful. Everyone was thankful to the doctors, gods and the technology or whatever they have had their faith on. A great relief indeed!

We couldn't wait for the next one month to pass by so that we could activate the implant and see Anasooya hearing the very first sounds of her life time...