When Eli Thurman of Conway, who was born deaf, underwent surgery at St. John’s three years ago to receive a cochlear implant, his parents hoped he might gain enough hearing from the device to protect himself from danger.

“He can hear a whisper,” says his mom, Stacy. “The implant gave him so much more than we expected.”

At 2, Eli was the first cochlear implant recipient in Springfield. St. John’s otolaryngologist (ear, nose and throat specialist) Scott Estrem, M.D., who has been performing cochlear implants since 1987, performed Eli’s surgery in 2000.

“I have to admit it was scary, Eli being the first implant patient in the area, but it would have been scary regardless,” Stacy says. “I think the staff at St. John’s Clinic - Ear, Nose & Throat went above and beyond to make sure that everything was …”  “Perfect,” says Eli’s dad, Greg, finishing his wife’s sentence. Stacy nods her head in agreement.

The quarter-sized device, which takes about three hours to surgically implant in the skin behind the ear, is an advanced electronic device with a soft electrode array that is threaded into the spiral-shaped inner ear, or cochlea. The electrodes send impulses directly to the nerve fibers in the cochlea. The external components of the implant include a headpiece and a sound processor. The small headpiece contains the system’s microphone. Eli wears a miniature version, which looks like a traditional hearing aid, behind his ear. The sound processor converts speech and other sounds into electrical signals, which travel through the skin by radio waves to the implant, then to the inner ear and on to the brain where they are interpreted as sound.

Patients must wait 30 days after cochlear-implant surgery to allow the swelling to subside before the device can be activated. The patient then meets with the audiologist who programs the sound processor and instructs the patient and family members how to program it.  

The Thurmans remember every detail about the day Eli heard for the first time.

 “We were all in a small room with Stacy’s mom and (St. John’s audiologist) Lisa (Geier, Ph.D.) Lisa was holding up a picture of a dog and barking and asked him to bark, too. Eli barked, so we knew that he was hearing. It was kind of a tear-jerker moment,” Greg says.

After the implant was turned on, Eli visited St. John’s Clinic - Ear, Nose & Throat weekly for hearing tests until Geier felt the implant’s program was adjusted properly. He then began making monthly visits and now comes in about every six months. Eli occasionally uses sign language to communicate if the batteries are low in his sound processor or if he doesn’t have it on.

“He doesn’t wear the headpiece and sound processor to bed, but they go on first thing in the morning,” Stacy says.

Eli receives speech therapy at school. When other kids ask about his implant, he says “it makes my ears work.”

“He fits in with the other kids and is well liked. This really hasn’t seemed to have affected him socially,” Stacy says.