Not Functional Without Cochlear Implants? Imagine That!
In response to that ignorant sportwriter who said about the basketball player “He’s had about 75 percent hearing loss since birth but uses implants that allow him to be functional.” http://www.deafread.com/go/40779
Marlee Matlin
Bernard Bragg
Linda Bove
Deanne Bray
Shoshhannah Stern
Michelle Banks
C.J. Jones
Phyllis Frelich
Terrylene
Lou Ferrigno
Thomas Edison
Granville Redmond
Regina Hughes
Louis Frisino
Douglas Tilden
Robert Davila
William Castle
Robert Weitchrecht
Beethoven
Jane Dillehay
Michael Moore
Caroline Solomon
Carolyn Stern
Steve Rattner
Andrew Foster
Dummy Hoy
Shelley Beattie
Curtis Pride
Terrence Parkin
Raymond Luczak
Laura C. Reden
Gary Malkowski
Gil Eastman
Roy Holcomb
Laurent Clerc
Robert Mather
Josh Mendelsohn
Greg Hlibok
Candace McCullough
Linda Lytle
Tom Coughlin
Otto Berg
Jay Croft
Gertrude Galloway
Helen Keller
This list is just the tip of the iceberg.
They are inventors, artists, actors, actresses, lawyers, dentists, doctors, scientists, professors, professional athletes, psychologists, writers, priests, and politicians
There are many more successful people, too many to list here.
The bloggers and vloggers on DeafRead are successful. So are the readers and viewers.
They are everywhere in the hearing society
We do not need cochlear implants to be functional!! 
hat tip to Tayler Mayer
email contact: mishkazena@aol.com
In response to that ignorant sportwriter who said about the basketball player “He’s had about 75 percent hearing loss since birth but uses implants that allow him to be functional.” http://www.deafread.com/go/40779
Marlee Matlin
Bernard Bragg
Linda Bove
Deanne Bray
Shoshhannah Stern
Michelle Banks
C.J. Jones
Phyllis Frelich
Terrylene
Lou Ferrigno
Thomas Edison
Granville Redmond
Regina Hughes
Louis Frisino
Douglas Tilden
Robert Davila
William Castle
Robert Weitchrecht
Beethoven
Jane Dillehay
Michael Moore
Caroline Solomon
Carolyn Stern
Steve Rattner
Andrew Foster
Dummy Hoy
Shelley Beattie
Curtis Pride
Terrence Parkin
Raymond Luczak
Laura C. Reden
Gary Malkowski
Gil Eastman
Roy Holcomb
Laurent Clerc
Robert Mather
Josh Mendelsohn
Greg Hlibok
Candace McCullough
Linda Lytle
Tom Coughlin
Otto Berg
Jay Croft
Gertrude Galloway
Helen Keller
This list is just the tip of the iceberg.
They are inventors, artists, actors, actresses, lawyers, dentists, doctors, scientists, professors, professional athletes, psychologists, writers, priests, and politicians
There are many more successful people, too many to list here.
The bloggers and vloggers on DeafRead are successful. So are the readers and viewers.
They are everywhere in the hearing society
We do not need cochlear implants to be functional!!
hat tip to Tayler Mayer
email contact: mishkazena@aol.com
March 27th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Right on!
We’re very much functional, thank you very much, you ignorants. LOL We can do everything just like them. How can you function in the sports competitions without CIs? We all did that when we played in sports. Hey, look at Curtis Pride…he played for NY Yankees for brief time. He didn’t even have CI. I recalled him wearing hearing aid(s) but still he functioned with or without them.
There are millions of deaf people all over the world can function without CI as well.
Misha
March 27th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Amen…thank you, Elizabeth…you are 100% correct! (again)
March 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Dr. William Castle’s deaf?!?! Do you mean former Director of NTID?
March 27th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
WAD, my mistake. Thanks for catching that.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Well said, girl……
Ha, ha, ha!
Those people who weren’t born before 1980’s are successful people. They were raised without the CIs.
Cochlear Implantation, Inc. was born after 1980’s.
What were they thinking?
Pretty ironic, isn’t it?
LOL!
March 27th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
alot people seem to think being deaf is unfunctionable… that is one of old wives’ tales.
March 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
carolyn stern is a dr. in rochester and she does have a CI
March 27th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
That is news to me. The questions that beg to be asked: Did she grow up without cochlear implants? Did she attend schools without cochlear implants? How did she function before she got cochlear implants?
I know a prelingually deaf dentist who has a cochlear implant. He had been a dentist for many years before he got the implant. I have several friends who got cochlear implants the last five years. They functioned very well without cochlear implants the first 40 years, being already successful with their careers.
The point is that the reporter was sorely mistaken when he asserted that a deaf person needs cochlear implants to be ‘functional’.
P.S. I looked up at the date when Carolyn Stern got her cochlear implant. She was already in the medical residency program, seeing patients, when she got hers.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
“Deaf people can do anything but answer
the voice phone.”
– Dr. Elizabeth Benson
Professor of Education and
Dean of Women
Interpreter
Gallaudet College 1930s-1970s.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Please add
Ferdinand Bérthier - France
Jean Massieu - France
Sophia Fowler
Sir John Ashley - a British Parliament member
Mervin Garreston - vice president GU
Jack R. Gannon - vice president GU
Katherine Jankowski
Alexander Fleischmann
To know more about Monsieurs Bérthier and Massieu, you would have to read Harlan Lane’s
book, “When the Mind Hears.”
March 27th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Right on!
Signing speaks so well!
Wasn’t it also functioning?
We are functional.
We are functional.
Because we hear and speak well
in our sign language!
Amen! One more poem.
Speak or sign alive
No one is unfunctional
Unfunctional Dead
March 27th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I’m tempted to type: We Deaf are FULLY functional, just like Data from Star Trek: Next Generation, but I think that would be a bad joke. (For Trekkies, you might get my meaning.)
Oops. I typed it.
Shel
March 27th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
I am getting tired of hearing people saying that we are not functional if we cant learn how to speak or “hear” like hearing people. Great list and way to show them that we ARE fine with or without implants!!
March 27th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
thanks MZ excellent post…sigh, we can do ANYTHING except hear…they don’t get it…..it’s awful….disappointed to hear like that….
March 27th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Are IJK and JKF eligible to be on list?
March 27th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
You are right to say, “Image That!” Boy! That writer is very irresponible to do that! It is sad because most hearing people get misconception again. I don’t appreciate that.
Of course, anybody can be functional without CI. Of course, of course and of course!
End of discussion. (scoff)(head shaking)
March 27th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
Oops. MZ, thank you for sharing this post.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Some hearing people need brain implants.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
So, because I do not subscribe to the fashion of “wearing” an implant or “using” a hearing aid, I am not truly functional? Hmmm Its a wonder I can “function” as a mother, a career-woman, a photographer, a researcher, a driver, a CHESS player, a dancer, a … a … a….
Gee, to think I was functioning as a human being all along. How wrong I was! Shame on me! I need an implant to function in this hard-core world of sound!
March 27th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Brain implant — good one!
Jane Kelleher Fernandes said:
“Hearing aids are better than ever. Implants are
better than ever,” Fernandes said. “Progress in
genetics is leading to the idea that you could
choose not to have a deaf child. All that puts
huge pressures on these deaf students.”
Source: “Signs of Change At Gallaudet” by Fred Hiatt, THE WASHINGTON POST, May 15, 2006, page A17.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Count me in, as a civil engineering Intermediate Highway Designer, myself ASL, while other two HOH still as a technician. Poor guys! ASL helps!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
MZ
Playing professional basketball is different and his achievements with his implants should be celebrated in that arena.
This sportswriter sickens me. “Celebrate his achievements with his implants.”!!!!
“Hearing people need brain implants.” Unquote Mike Schmidt (Drmzz). This sportswriter needs one immediately!
I am in a growly mood after reading this!
March 27th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Hey, easy on the insults for that’s no way to get naive hearing people to want to learn more about the culture or deafness. Makes me wonder about some folks here, especially those aspiring to be counselors……
March 27th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
DrMzz,
Right!
BoT Chair Jane Spilman dehumanized deaf
people by saying, “Deaf people are not
ready to function in the hearing world.”
She needs a brain implant!
March 28th, 2008 at 2:01 am
We are even sexually functional!
I won’t be surprised if a CI implantee becomes sexually impotent. Maybe as a result of a CI, one needs a penile prosthesis implantation or some kind of penile augmentation.
Me bad! Heh heh. Anyway, we are fully functional in this world, without cochlear (penile) implantation (augmentation).
We can cook, make love, make baskets, dunk the ball, drive 110 mph or even 200 mph, swat a baseball over the fence, dance by having people read our hips, we can teach our children to conduct themselves honorably in an ever-increasingly rowdy world, we can even function better than the road rage drivers, we can make better decisions than Saddam or Bush ever did, we can have the mind to bring home flowers to our loved one, we can read the newspapers and check the stock market which fluctuates like crazy, just like the hearing world, I have met so many sad hearing people who feel they have lost it…
Who says we cannot be functional? People think we can only have our dick do the talking?
Pardon my french.
March 28th, 2008 at 4:14 am
I think it’d be cool to see some mini-biographies of these names - role models, for sure. If parents are making decisions about implants, they should at least know that they are not required to lead healthy, successful lives.
March 28th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
LOL, drmzz! Or hearing people need deaf implants so they understand!
I’m SICK of hearing people saying “Never mind” when I say “I’m deaf”, (growl)!
March 28th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
How about Paddy Ladd?
March 29th, 2008 at 1:04 am
So many Deaf individuals bend over backwards to do what it takes to be “functional” within a Hearing World.
When will Hearing people ACCEPT to do what is necessary to be able to communicate with the DEAF MINORITY within a Hearing World???
May 21st, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Hello,
Yes, I am Deaf and have a CI. I was Deaf in my right ear, Hard of Hearing in my left. I wore hearing aids for years.
When I lost the rest of my hearing overnight, after 1 year, and in the middle of my residency pgm in Family Medicine, I got the nucleus 22. Note, this was in 1991 before (smile) I became involved with the Deaf community.
Communication is important to me; as a doctor, I sign (ASL) fluently with Deaf clients and continue to use my implant more as a hearing aid, since it does not fully restore my hearing back to normal. I don’t discriminate against those who can hear :).
Best,
Carolyn Stern MD
Family Physician
CEO, Deaf Health Education, Access & Literacy,Inc.
Rochester, NY