Ear implant gives boy in Dubai his life back

Maricar Gonzaga has a seven-year-old son, who was diagnosed with auditory neuropathy, a kind of hearing disorder, when he was nearly a year old.

Maricar Gonzaga’s son suffered from hearing loss before successful surgery enabled him to hear again. Navin Khianey for The National

DUBAI // The mother of a child who suffers from hearing loss said her son was found to have a problem when he was almost a year old and that finding out early made a difference .

Maricar Gonzaga’s boy, who is now seven and attending mainstream school after an implant, has auditory neuropathy, where the outer hair cells in the cochlea function but sound is not transmitted properly to the auditory nerve and brain.

“He passed the newborn screening test but wasn’t talking like other children,” Mrs Gonzaga said. “He didn’t get the more advanced test.”

When he was two he was still not making any sounds. He could not hear anything and was sent to speech therapy.

After a battery of tests, the parents were told that their son suffered from a hearing disorder.

“[So] we got the implant,” Mrs Gonzaga said.

His mother is all for early intervention and asks other parents who are in a similar situation not to give up hope.

“My son is in a mainstream school and is talking now. He has therapy once a week and is one of the top performers in mathematics,” said Mrs Gonzaga, who is from the Philippines and lives in Dubai.

But coping with the realisation that her son had a hearing disorder had not been easy for the mother of two. “He was my firstborn. I was depressed and wouldn’t go out or go to parties. Reality hit me hard, but I realised there was something I could do,” she said.

She and her husband chose to get the implant done in the Philippines because they wanted to be with family at the time.

“I consider that an important decision. It was a leap of faith,” she said. “It pays to have an early intervention. We didn’t delay and it worked.”