Wired for Sound: A Journey into Hearing.
Blindfolding your eyes, plugging your ears, and taping your mouth shut, these are all ways we simulate being blind, deaf or mute. We do this to try and get a feel for what its like to have one of these "handicaps." We will never really know what it feels like to live day in and day out in a world of silence. This is a world where the voice of the person standing in front of you isn't heard, nor is the sound on the movie screen or the birds chirping in the early morning. This is unimaginable to most of us, but to millions around the world, this is normal, everyday life, and they've learned to overcome it. In Wired for Sound, Beverly Biderman leads us through her lifelong experience with being deaf, receiving a cochlear implant, and the effects of that on her life. She allows us to share her personal struggles and shows us at length how she dealt and is dealing with them. She offers many statistics to help educate us as well. She shows us something that is not come across very often, insight into both the hearing and deaf worlds from a personal point of view, one who has experienced both.
We are introduced to Beverly Biderman on her "turn on" day, which is six weeks after she had the cochlear implant put in and the wound is healed enough for the doctor to turn the device on. This is the moment she's been waiting for since she made the decision to get the cochlear implant. Although the doctors have warned her not to have great expectations, she still believes that she will magically be able to hear everything and better than ever. She thinks that she will now be able to look at the persons eyes, rather than their mouth because she will no longer have to lip read. She wants to listen music and to be able to socialize comfortably without worrying what she sounds like because now her speaking will be much clearer. All this, she believes, will happen immediately, but this is not the case.
