The Sunday Detroit Free Press revisits the story of a 14 year-old Ypsilanti girl a decade after undergoing a controversial surgery to install a hearing implant to correct hearing loss that resulted from medical treatment to keep her alive after being born 14 weeks premature.
Bryana Hargrow will be a freshman this fall at Skyline High School. She recently opted to have a second cochlear implant — electrodes implanted in the inner ear and connected to hardware around the back of the head and ear — after having her first implanted when she was just 19 months old.
Hargrow was born weighing just 1 pound, 11 ounces and was given an antibiotic called gentamicin to ward off infections following steroid treatment. One possible side affect of the drug is permanent hearing loss. Doctors first noticed her difficulty with hearing at around 8 or 9 months of age.
Some advocates for the deaf object to the implants, saying they imply there's something wrong with deaf people and are implanted in infants who can't yet make their own choices. Hargrow's mother, Carlotta Gore, said she always wanted her daughter to be independent.
Read the Freep story here.
