Deaf pair enter world of sound

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- The young couple sat in the small room, waiting for a click on the computer that would transform their lives.

An audiologist adjusted the sound levels, then said, "Go live," activating a microphone on a device hooked around the man's left ear.

On cue, the man's wife spoke.

"I love you," she said softly.

"Wow," he exclaimed as he heard a flood of muffled, yet magical sounds.

In six years together, Jenni and Russ Ewald had never communicated this way.

The deaf couple can now enjoy the sound of each other's voices -- and the squeal of their daughter's laughter. This year, they are marking their first Valentine's Day together with hearing.

Russ and Jenni Ewald grew up without the soundtrack of everyday life -- no computers beeping, no sirens shrieking, no babies crying.

Both have been profoundly deaf since childhood because of meningitis. Jenni wasn't even a year old when she lost her hearing; Russ was 3 when his started to fade.

After their daughter, Camille, was born nearly two years ago, Jenni decided on a life-altering change: a cochlear implant.

The implant, which has been around since the 1970s, is an electronic device surgically placed under the skin, behind and in the ear. It activates the hearing nerves, allowing sound to be transmitted to the brain.

Hearing with implants isn't perfect, nor instantaneous.

"The brain has to figure out what to do with all these new sounds," says Candace Blank, an audiologist who works with the Ewalds at Loyola University Medical Center, where the surgery was performed. "It's like hearing a foreign language and having to learn it."

When she was 14, Jenni rejected the suggestion of a cochlear implant. "I didn't want to be the only exceptional deaf person among the crowd I hung out with," she says.

At the time, cochlear implants were more cumbersome than now, with wires from ear to waist. "I felt like I would be mocked if I wore these big long wires," Jenni says.

After Jenni, now 30, married Russ four years ago, they began considering cochlear implants. Their research became more serious after Camille's birth.

Jenni recalls one worrisome night when she slept sitting up, rather than stretch out because feedback from her hearing aids could muffle sounds from her newborn baby.

The nervous mother wondered what else she'd miss. "I became more and more concerned -- What kind of communication was I going to have with her growing up?" Jenni says.

But Jenni -- a victims assistance counselor at the Chicago Hearing Society -- worried, too, about possible negative reactions from deaf friends. Cochlear implants are a sensitive issue for some in the deaf community who may feel abandoned, even betrayed by those who have the surgery.

Jenni's friends were surprised, even shocked, but supportive. "As long as I'm still who I am," she says, "they accept it."

Last April, Jenni had the cochlear implant. Six months later, it was Russ' turn.

Russ, a senior computer systems technician with three college degrees, is conscious of being part of a family where so many members have top jobs in Fortune 500 companies.

"I look up to all of them and say, 'Why can't I be like them?' " he says. "I always try so hard, sometimes I have to try twice as hard."

He's now hoping the cochlear implant will open doors. Already, it has opened some.

He now listens to music; the Beatles and the Doors are favorites. He hears his daughter and his wife.

Soon, there will be one more voice: Their second child is due this spring.

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