Rebekah Edelman first began to notice she was losing her hearing when she was 14. She slowly began responding ‘what?’ to people talking to her or asking them to repeat themselves. Soon, she was the only child in her school wearing hearing aids.

“When I first learned that I was losing my hearing, I just thought it was weird. No one in my family has hearing loss, so I was really confused for a while. I really just wanted an answer. Why me? Why am I losing my hearing? What did I do?” she said.

For a few years, her hearing levels were in the acceptable range, but a test in 2013 showed that her levels had declined rapidly. At 23, she is now legally deaf.

Still, Edelman continued on with her life, graduating from Central Washington University in 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in public health. Through a mixture of lip reading, non-verbal cues and sign language, she has built friendships, a longterm relationship and works a full-time retail job.

“She’s adapted incredibly well,” said Dr. Trac Duong, Edelman’s doctor and a specialist in Otolaryngology, or ear, nose and throat conditions. “But in the real world, a lot of patients fake it– They’ll nod or say yes, or they just won’t engage in the conversation. There will be situations they will avoid, social situations, a lot of times. You can only compensate so much before it affects your life.”

Those limitations– the fear that she won’t be able to understand the questions posed to her in a job interview, her mother’s worry that if Edelman has a child, she wouldn’t be able to hear her baby’s cries– are what brought Edelman to Overlake hospital on July 31 for a cochlear implant surgery.

Overlake Hospital is the first hospital in Washington to use the new implant. It is also the only hospital on the Eastside and near many Eastern Washington communities to offer any type of cochlear implant surgery.

A cochlear implant is a small electronic device that can uses a group of electrodes that collects impulses from an external transmitter and sends then to different regions of the auditory nerve, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. The thin electrode is inserted directly into the spiral-shaped inner ear, bypassing the damaged cells and stimulating the hearing nerve directly.

Since they were approved by the FDA in 1984, around 350,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants. That includes more than 58,000 adults and 38,000 children.

The Cochlear Nucleus Profile Edelman received is the world’s thinnest cochlear implant– at 3.9 millimeters, it is up to 40 percent thinner than other implant electrodes available on the market.

It’s thin size makes in discrete. A week after her surgery, the only signs of Edelman’s implant are the pink marks where her stitches were.

Despite their widespread use, cochlear implants, and Edelman’s decision to get one, are not a given for many deaf people. There are those within the deaf community who aren’t fans of the device and have spoken out against them.

“Many within the medical profession continue to view deafness essentially as a disability and an abnormality and believe that deaf and hard of hearing individuals need to be ‘fixed’ by cochlear implants,” officials from the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) wrote in a 2000 position paper. “A major reason implantation have been pursued so aggressively by the media, the medical profession, and parents is not simply because of the hoped-for benefits that come with being able to hear in a predominantly hearing society, but more because of the perceived burdens associated with being deaf.”

Organizations like the NAD say that there is continued need for education that deaf persons are not handicapped or second-class citizens. Edelman herself says she has encountered customers at her retail job who have taken her deafness for stupidity.

In her case, Edelman was initially hesitant to have surgery on what she felt was the snap-judgement of a doctor she visited in Ellensburg. Having undergone problems with hearing aids that she felt hastened her hearing loss, she sought several other opinions before deciding to receive a cochlear implant.

“Each person has a different opinion about cochlear implants,” she said. “But, I look at my life, and I live in a hearing world. I mean, I’m scared to apply for a job and go on interviews. In the end, it seemed like the right decision.”

While there is no certainty the the implant will work, and if it does, Edelman will have to readjust to understanding speech again. But the simple joys are what she and her mother, Kari, are focusing on.

“I can’t wait to get that first phone call,” said Kari Edelman, as she began to tear up. “It’s been so long since we’ve spoken over the phone.”

This is part one of a two-part series; pick up the Reporter’s Sept. 4 issue for part two.

Edit: the date of the release of part two has been changed. It was previously set to be released on Aug. 28, but will now be released on Sept. 4.