Markosyan StellaMarkosyan Stella

Narrated by Lilit Mkrtchyan, Stella´s Mom.

Markosyan Stella naushniknerov_picmonkeyedHello, my name is Lilit Mkrtchyan, I am Stella’s Mom. I live with my family in Yerevan, Armenia. I have three daughters, Stella is one of the twins. She was born on the 28th of September, 2005 with normal hearing capacity. I felt myself the happiest mother in the world with my 3 daughters and thought that nothing could prevent my happiness as the most important thing in the world is health.
But……
In August, 2008, Stella got ill, she was diagnosed neurotoxicity. The medicine she took for recovering had side effects. After a long way of recovery she started not to react on noises anymore. We took her for other examinations in Arabkir and Erebouni Clinics in Armenia. A disaster after all when she was diagnosed 4th grade sensorineural hearing loss. I couldn’t believe that my lovely daughter became deaf.

After learning about the required amount for a cochlear implantation, which was the only way to see Stella hearing again, we were destroyed. However, although I didn’t have money to buy the CI device, I didn’t give up. For almost a year and a half I took her to the speech therapist to maintain Stella’s speech and was waiting for a miracle. These speech therapies helped a lot. During all that time we asked ourselves the same question. Where and how to find that money? Inessa Harutyunyan, the CI therapist, and Dr. Vigen Bakhshinyan, the CI surgeon, helped us to find a donor for the CI device. In November, 2009, Stella was implanted.
Right before the surgery we were explained how everything works. We did know that happiness is for 5 years only and that we will have to look for a donor again to buy a new SP for Stella for the next 5 years.
After being implanted she got an SP with a bag and she gradually got back to hearing again. Her sisters helped her a lot as well. They were very close and communicating all the time.
Stella was growing fast and the SP with a bag became more and more inconvenient for her.
I am happy that there are still people who think of poor countries as Armenia is, where upgrades are still unreachable for CI children. One of these generous people is Dr. Monika Lehnhardt, the president of the Prof. Ernst Lehnhardt Foundation, who organized and realized the project “Upgrade SPs for Armenia”. We got the SP 3G Sprint in July, 2012, personally from her.
A year later we also got Freedom SP from the Lehnhardt Foundation, which made everything much easier for Stella. Now she doesn’t even want to see her 3G, as Freedom gives her far more. Her reaction became much better and she solved her problem with dictation at school. She didn’t hear the ending of the words before, now she does.
Of course, it was a challenge and long practice, but my daughter did it.
I also know these speech processors belonged to people in Germany with the same problem. I and my family are thankful to the families who donated their SPs. My special thanks go to Dr. Monika Lehnhardt and her team for doing this project and several information projects for us. Now I know that information and upgrades are as important as the implantation itself, one without the other cannot exist.Narrated by Lilit Mkrtchyan, Stella´s Mom.

Markosyan Stella naushniknerov_picmonkeyedHello, my name is Lilit Mkrtchyan, I am Stella’s Mom. I live with my family in Yerevan, Armenia. I have three daughters, Stella is one of the twins. She was born on the 28th of September, 2005 with normal hearing capacity. I felt myself the happiest mother in the world with my 3 daughters and thought that nothing could prevent my happiness as the most important thing in the world is health.
But……
In August, 2008, Stella got ill, she was diagnosed neurotoxicity. The medicine she took for recovering had side effects. After a long way of recovery she started not to react on noises anymore. We took her for other examinations in Arabkir and Erebouni Clinics in Armenia. A disaster after all when she was diagnosed 4th grade sensorineural hearing loss. I couldn’t believe that my lovely daughter became deaf.

After learning about the required amount for a cochlear implantation, which was the only way to see Stella hearing again, we were destroyed. However, although I didn’t have money to buy the CI device, I didn’t give up. For almost a year and a half I took her to the speech therapist to maintain Stella’s speech and was waiting for a miracle. These speech therapies helped a lot. During all that time we asked ourselves the same question. Where and how to find that money? Inessa Harutyunyan, the CI therapist, and Dr. Vigen Bakhshinyan, the CI surgeon, helped us to find a donor for the CI device. In November, 2009, Stella was implanted.
Right before the surgery we were explained how everything works. We did know that happiness is for 5 years only and that we will have to look for a donor again to buy a new SP for Stella for the next 5 years.
After being implanted she got an SP with a bag and she gradually got back to hearing again. Her sisters helped her a lot as well. They were very close and communicating all the time.
Stella was growing fast and the SP with a bag became more and more inconvenient for her.
I am happy that there are still people who think of poor countries as Armenia is, where upgrades are still unreachable for CI children. One of these generous people is Dr. Monika Lehnhardt, the president of the Prof. Ernst Lehnhardt Foundation, who organized and realized the project “Upgrade SPs for Armenia”. We got the SP 3G Sprint in July, 2012, personally from her.
A year later we also got Freedom SP from the Lehnhardt Foundation, which made everything much easier for Stella. Now she doesn’t even want to see her 3G, as Freedom gives her far more. Her reaction became much better and she solved her problem with dictation at school. She didn’t hear the ending of the words before, now she does.
Of course, it was a challenge and long practice, but my daughter did it.
I also know these speech processors belonged to people in Germany with the same problem. I and my family are thankful to the families who donated their SPs. My special thanks go to Dr. Monika Lehnhardt and her team for doing this project and several information projects for us. Now I know that information and upgrades are as important as the implantation itself, one without the other cannot exist.

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