A Life Without Sound: What you need to learn about hearing loss in children

Imagine living a life without sound. Imagine growing up without ever knowing what it’s like to hear the sound of laughter, music or your loved ones’ voices.

It’s quite difficult to imagine or put yourself in the shoes of someone growing up missing one of the five senses to help you get by through your daily life. Our senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste are all important and connected that if one thing goes wrong, all aspects of life gets affected.

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For Enzo, discovering the world around him is a challenge. He can’t speak and can’t express himself properly. He was already seven months old when his mom discovered that he can’t hear on both ears.

Bilateral Profound Hearing Loss

Hearing loss is a common birth defect that affects 1 to 3 out of 1,000 babies.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), thirty two million children have disabling hearing loss. This means that the hearing loss is greater than 30 dB – that is the sound of a quiet bedroom at night or a whisper.

Enzo was diagnosed with Bilateral Profound Hearing Loss. There is damage in his inner ear or cochlea, the nerve pathway from the ear to the brain.

Source: https://mechanicalcochlea.wordpress.com/home/the-cochlea/

This type of hearing loss may be caused by genetic syndromes or infection from the mother that was passed to her baby in the womb.

In Enzo’s case, his mom Kat had a urinary tract related infection while she was still pregnant with him.

Race against time

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association notes that 'hearing is critical to speech and language development, communication, literacy and learning. Early identification and intervention of hearing loss can lessen the impact on a child’s development.'

Families and friends are in a race against time to help give Enzo the gift of sound. He is still in his best age to have a cochlear implant surgery that will help him hear the world around him.  He is turning two years old on October 23rd.

One cochlear implant costs about P1.3 million per ear.

On our next blog entry, we will discuss more about cochlear implants and how it will help Enzo hear again.

To learn more about Enzo's condition, kindly read HERE.

Please follow this blog for more updates about Enzo and to learn more about hearing loss in children and other related information.

For more information, contact Kat at (+63) 917-8067905 or email enzogiftofsound@gmail.com.