Vanessa

-I was born deaf, so people ask me over the years, "What do you hear?"
And I couldn't really answer because I didn't know what it was like.
What it was like to hear, so how could I compare?
It was just the way life was for me, the way the world works for me.
It was very natural for me not to hear the way you would hear.
Lipreading came very naturally to me.
Very sensitive to vibration, the movement of air in the house.
I could be up there, and I could tell when somebody, a particular person comes in the house, 'cause I can smell.
Anyway, so I was very happy the way I was.
I was fine.
I was a happy person.

So when I got the cochlean implant, they implanted electrodes, so I have 16 electrodes inserted in my cochlea.
So that way the message can be sent directly to my brain.
It's a big surgery, they make a little bed for the magnet, they have a computer microchip.
-You have a microchip in your head?
-Yeah, it's inside.
-And it attaches by the magnet?
-No, the magnet is on the outside, to pick up the sound.
Like the sound goes in and then it pushes out through here, and it's sent to the microchip through the electrodes.
So after the surgery I had to wait four weeks for everything to sort out.
And then I would turn it on.
And I didn't hear anything
And I thought "Oh my God."
But you know what? I couldn't hear sound as we know.
But I think what was happening was my brain didn't know what to do with the information.
But all of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.
All of a sudden I felt my body moving with sound.

And then I learned that sound is electricity.
And then I learned that sound is electricity.
And then I learned that sound is electricity.
And all the different sound moved differently.
And I thought maybe I could sense it more because I couldn't hear anything for over 30 years.
So, for the first time, I thought "Wow, this sound is doing different things to my body."
So, I have a battery, and it has a life that lasts 48 hours at a time, so when it goes off, all of a sudden everything in my body goes still.
And that's when I understood the term "Dead silence."