Cochlear Meeting about Implants - Memphis, Tennessee - September 17, 2009

The Memphis Oral School for the Deaf hosted a meeting for Cochlear Corporation to discuss their cochlear implants. I attended this meeting to find out everything I could about what is most likely in our near future. Assuming that Ella Marie will receive implants we may choose to go with Cochlear. They just had their new product released - The Nucleus 5. Some updates to this product is that it can be submerged in 3 feet of water for up to 30 minutes with rechargeable batteries and it should continue to work. Of course this is not supposed to be tried at home, but in the past the external parts of cochlear implants could not get wet at all. You still cannot swim in them. The external speech processor is much smaller. This company provides a lot of support to its customers (as I am sure all of the other cochlear implant companies do). A message board, people directory, and games are all part of their website. You can go to cochlearcomunity.com . There is also online information provided for parents and teachers of children with implants. There are a lot of assistive devices available. These implants are cell phone and ipod compatible. If I have any questions I can contact Brandy Harvey at bharvey@cochlear.com or I can friend request her on the cochlear community. All and all the meeting was very informative. Informational packets were given out as well.