Maddison's world of sound
A little girl who was born profoundly deaf has been given the gift of hearing courtesy of a cochlear implant.
Four-year-old Maddison Magee's world was transformed from a wall of silence into an explosion of sound after she underwent cochlear implant surgery to her left ear in the week before her second birthday.
Since then, she has astonished her parents Simon and Adele, of St Helens, Merseyside, by developing her speech so rapidly that she is now near the top of her class at St Anne's Catholic Primary School in Sutton.
Adele, 34, said: "Maddison is our little miracle. Before the operation she could only hear something like a very loud siren - even with her hearing aids in. She couldn't hear any speech whatsoever. Now she can listen to the birds singing in the trees and speak to all her friends and family. She's a bubbly little chatterbox now!
"It was a tough decision to let her undergo surgery at such a young age, especially when it's a four and a half hour operation. But doctors told us her hearing aids alone would never be powerful enough to help her speak. Maddison was so brave throughout it all - she was a star. It was the best decision we ever made."
Adele says that although the devastating news was 'a bombshell' at the time, she now thanks her lucky stars that Maddison's deafness was picked up at such an early stage because she is now age-equivalent.
Read more at the St Helens Reporter.
