The Hum of a Bee

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It is tedious the number of times we have heard how difficult life will be if we did not have our five senses, and how privileged we are of possessing them. The thought of not hearing, seeing, or smelling terrifies us when the theme pops out, but in our deep interior, most of us just sympathize with those who have sensory problems, and the feeling vanishes quickly as when it came. When I heard that the 25 of February was the International Day of Cochlear Implant, the first thought that came to my mind was how we, perfectly healthy humans, do not get interested in knowing the history people had to go through, to invent such a thing. We just get stocked with the information that movies, television shows, or books give us when one of their characters has sensory issues. We kind of get their feelings and the struggle they live with wanting to be “normal”. This lack of curiosity about learning how life-changing inventions work annoys me. Today´s generations prefer being informed of what is the next trend dance they will have to learn to be “cool enough” and post it on Tik-Tok. But don't misunderstand me, I think knowing a little bit of everything is important, life is composed of so many topics, and all of them have their magic. So why shouldn't we, Pacha´s community, feed our intellectual brain with this magnificent matter?

The story of the Cochlear Implant has something special, from all medical studies. The beginning of everything was scary and insane, someone called Alejandro Volta in the 1800s, inserted metal rods in his ears and connected them to an electrical source, for an unknown reason, and switched them on. Once he recovered from almost burning his ears and losing consciousness, he stated that he could hear a similar sound to the howling of the wind or the bubbling of water. In any case, this extroverted experiment served to confirm the concept that electrical stimulation is capable of triggering auditory sensations in the individual. Years later on, the charming 25 of February of 1957, two exceptional doctors from France, called André Djourno y Charles Eyries, inserted a copper thread into the cochlea of a 50-year-old male patient, who suffered from total deafness. The medical report indicated that this patient was able to perceive the rhythm of the language, thanks to this surgical procedure. Just like that, with two men in an OR, quirurgical instruments, and a needy patient, the first considered Cochlear Implant was born. Medicine grows thanks to the passion, thanks to the desire of helping those who need it, but in my perspective, creating new studies and surgeries is what drives a doctor to continue, and this is what students and area staff did with the Cochlear Implant. Through development, this surgery is trouble-free in a surgeon's eyes, that much that today there are currently thousands of implanted patients distributed around the world. Therefore, the Cochlear Implant is no longer an experimental procedure to become a safe, reliable, and proven technique for the treatment of severe to profound hearing loss.  

Imagine. Days pass like any other. The beauty of the colors of flowers in your garden, charms you. You open the crystal slide door, walk upon those incredible flowers, get down to your knees, smell them, and they fill your soul with sweetness. Then a bee comes by, stands in a flower, and collects its pollen, then it flies again away from you. Although it will sound insignificant, the sound of that bee crossing by, the sound of the wind that accompanies her, and the sound of the movement of other plants smashing against others will complete that delightful scene, but you are deaf. You can not hear those simple things. You cannot complete the perfect constant image that "normal" people face daily. Those small instants complete your life even if you do not realize it. And when that small, complex electronic device, that can provide some sense of hearing, which has a portion of it externally placed behind the ear, and a second part that is surgically placed under the skin, began to exist, the life of thousands completely changed.