And then, on July 7, 2001, at 10:30 am, I lost my ability to hear everything. While I was waiting to pick up a rental car in Reno, I suddenly thought the battery in my hearing aid had died. I replaced it. No luck. I switched hearing aids. Nothing.

I got into my rental car and drove to the nearest emergency room. For reasons that are still unknown, my only functioning ear had suffered “sudden-onset deafness.” I was reeling, trying to navigate in a world where the volume had been turned down to zero.

But there was a solution, a surgeon at Stanford Hospital told me a week later, speaking slowly so I could read his lips. I could have a computer surgically installed in my skull. A cochlear implant, as it is known, would trigger my auditory nerves with 16 electrodes that snaked inside my inner ear. It seemed drastic, and the $50,000 price tag was a dozen times more expensive than a high-end hearing aid. I went home and cried. Then I said yes.

This was the beginning a fascinating article from this month’s Wired magazine. It is the story of one man’s desire to hear his favorite peice of music again despite his hearing loss. I love listening to music and I can’t imagine what I would do without my hearing but I am thankful for people like the men and women in this article who are willing to endure the long process of pushing the scientific envelope. Read the article and get lost in the geek that is cochlear implant software development.

Link