The miracle of hearing
Published: October 18, 2006
Brandon Bailey’s bed vibrates in the morning to wake him up and his family has to spend a little more on smoke detectors fitted with strobe lights.
But the cost of those higher-priced necessities are nothing to a Loretta Road couple who thought they would never hear their son talk or tell him “I love you, Brandon,” without using their hands.
Brandon was 14 months old when a smoke detector in the family’s apartment went off and the toddler didn’t flinch. It was then his parents Doreen and Jon, a Waltham Police detective, learned their son was profoundly and inexplicably deaf. They were told he would never speak.
The news crushed the new parents who had at one time been told they would never be able to have children. Jon Bailey said he and his wife went to Hawaii for their fifth anniversary, and came home with the best souvenir — Brandon.
“It was a horrible day. It was tough. We would clap behind him and sometimes he would respond and sometimes he wouldn’t,” Doreen Bailey said when she learned Brandon was deaf, and a simple hearing aid would never help.
“With him (deafness) was a fluke. There is no reason, no family history.”
Jon Bailey said the family could only rent apartments on the first floor of buildings before they bought a house because the couple had to stomp to get their son’s attention.
“It’s been a long road, but it’s one I would take again,” Doreen Bailey said. “It’s not an easy life, but it’s our life.”
Brandon, now 15, was first featured in the Tribune — wearing his favorite Barney pajamas — in 1994 when he was 3 and his parents decided to go through with a risky, expensive and sometimes unsuccessful surgery that would one-day allow him to hear.
The family traveled to The Manhattan Eye and Ear Clinic in New York, where Brandon was fitted with a cochlear implant, a device that put 22 electrodes on his mastoid bone. A microphone worn behind his ear picks up sounds and transfers them to a processor transmitting information to his brain.
The operation and the speech therapy that followed and continues today has cost the family upward of $140,000, but it’s worth it. Insurance covers upgrades to the costly device.
“The most important thing is that Brandon is happy,” Jon Bailey said. “If (surgery) didn’t work, it didn’t work.”
Today, Brandon doesn’t fit into his Barney pajamas, but he fills out his F.A. Day Middle School football jersey. The eighth-grader plays nose tackle for the Newton school’s A Squad, and his proud dad paces the sidelines during every game. His coach calls him apple pie.
“We never expected anything like this,” said Jon Bailey, who explained his son can read lips, but only on those people who don’t sport mustaches.
Brandon attends the school because it teaches in speech and sign language. Next year, he will be a freshman at Newton North High School.
Brandon, a shy teen who is the spitting image of his dad, said he has wanted to play football ever since New England Patriots defensive end Jarvis Green attended his birthday party last summer.
Coach Bill Matyskiel said Brandon is one of three deaf players on the F A Day squad. The other two are his friends Derek Landis and Tom Ansil. They have an interpreter who helps them on the sidelines and in the huddle.
“Obviously, they can only play defense because they can’t hear the snap count,” he said. “They do a nice job. They are nice kids to work with.”
He said being deaf can be an asset on the field since the boys can never be forced offsides.
“As soon as the ball moves, they are going,” Matyskiel said.
Jon Bailey said it took a long time to get Brandon to come out of his shell, especially since many kids, and even some adults, still stare.
He said it was Boys & Girls Club Executive Director Ann Ormond who helped turn his son around, but it wasn’t easy to convince the protective father to let his son attend the Exchange Street club.
“People can be mean. I was tired of my son coming home in tears,” Jon Bailey said.
But after one day at the club, Brandon was hooked, and it took much effort to make him go home.
“He came here for a couple of years, and according to his dad, his time at the club really shaped who he was,” Ormond said. “He jumped in with both feet and he did really, really well. It made him much more outgoing.”
Sitting on the couch between his parents in the family’s living room, Brandon is a typical teenager. He wants to watch television, play video games and sendsmessages to his friends on his T-mobile Sidekick.
“He grew up to be your typical teenager,” Doreen Bailey said. “When I’m yelling at him, he will pull out his implant. He’s at an age where he decides whether he wants it on or off.”
Ormond said the fact that Brandon is deaf was never an issue for the other kids at her club.
“The fact that he was deaf, who cares,” she said. “Kids don’t see disability, kids don’t see color.”
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