Child left deaf by disease gets the miracle of sound
Published: March 7, 2007
The mother of a Pershore toddler who became profoundly deaf after suffering meningitis has spoken of her relief after the gradual return of her son’s hearing.
Annabelle Forse, whose two-year-old son Cole had cochlear implants switched on this week, said the awareness raised about the form of the deadly disease which afflicted Cole, was a welcome positive to emerge from the family’s ordeal.
Cole lost all hearing after developing pneumococcal meningitis when he was 18 months old, but on Monday heard sounds again for the first time in five months when the implants, fitted at the end of January at the Steelhouse Lane campus of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, were switched on.
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“Cole has some hearing but it will take a while to be back to any level we recognise,” said Mrs Forse, of Victoria Terrace, Pershore. “They turn it on very low at first so he can hear continuous sounds like a lorry driving past or a vacuum cleaner.”
The process can take as long as two years and Mrs Forse said she has to teach the toddler to hear again. .
“He will never have hearing as he did before,” she added. “You have to make a noise and point to where it’s coming from, so he associates the source with the noise.”
Cole’s parents - Annabelle and dad Rob - have supported a campaign to raise awareness of pneumococcal meningitis, encourag- ing parents with toddlers aged under two to immunise them.
“I didn’t know anything about the condition before Cole developed it,” said Annabelle. “It’s not something which can be caught, it is a bacteria which lives in the ears or the back of the throat and some people just develop it.
“We put up the Journal story about Cole at the St Andrews Parent and Toddler Group in Pershore and have had lots of feedback.”
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