Some of her favorite sounds are birds singing, rain pounding on the roof and the voices of her mother, father and sister.

For until two years ago, Samantha never heard any of those sounds. Hearing the simplest of sounds, that most people take for granted or find annoying, is a beautiful sound to Samantha.

She was born profoundly deaf and didn’t hear any sounds until after her cochlear implant surgery June 9, 2003, when she was 15.

"I was scared because it might not work or somehow I would be hurt from it," said Samantha, who is now 17 and a junior at Coon Rapids High School.

According to Christi Haupert, Samantha’s mother, she was considered a candidate for the surgery because she used hearing aids, which only allowed her to hear noises, and she had some speech.

"Before the surgery I only heard noises with my hearing aids. It was hard to listen and hard to understand. I had never heard my family’s true voices or birds or my dog. If people didn’t know sign language I really didn’t talk to them," Samantha said.

A panel of doctors, including an ENT specialist, audiologist, pediatrician and a speech therapist, determined that Samantha was a candidate for the surgery.

The implant is surgically placed under the skin behind the ear. An implant has four basic parts: a microphone, which picks up sound from the environment; a speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone; a transmitter and receiver/stimulator, which receive signals from the speech processor and convert them into electric impulses; and electrodes, which collect the impulses from the stimulator and send them to the brain.

The implant does not restore or create normal hearing. Instead, under the appropriate conditions, it can give a deaf person a useful auditory understanding of the environment and help him or her to understand speech.

After the 4 1/2-hour surgery, Samantha started to hear sounds. During the first week Samantha’s favorite thing was to make clicking noises with her tongue because she could hear the sound echo in her ears.

"It was odd because she would hear a noise, but didn’t understand what it was. In the beginning she was very frustrated," said Christi.

It can also take up to five years to reach the full benefits of the surgery. To help with the progress, she attends speech therapy once a week to learn about the sounds she is hearing and how to speak.

"I am learning many new sounds everyday," Samantha said. "The doctors told me it’s like when you’re a baby and your brain has to teach you the sounds.

"Speech therapy is teaching me how to listen and sort through the sounds. It’s helping my brain learn new sounds and I’m learning how to talk and listen.

"I can understand some words on the phone and someday I will use the phone, I know it."

Speech therapy is a very expensive type of therapy. To help pay for that expanse, a friend of the family contacted the Coon Rapids Lions Club to see if it would help Samantha.

Lions club members opened their hearts and charitable giving to help out Samantha by paying for her ongoing speech therapy.

"She has become a very, special person to me personally and to all the guys in the club," said John Leggate, community needs chairman with the Coon Rapids Lions Club.

"She spoke at our winter convention and everyone has fallen in love with her. She is a very special girl and it’s been a really nice thing between our club and Samantha."

"She is such a wonderful girl. We have taken her under our wings; she is our special person."

And Samantha feels the same way toward the Lions.

"They have helped me a lot and have kind of adopted me. They are my friends," said Samantha.

She has made many new friends in the Lions club and at school. However, it’s not been an easy road for Samantha.

It’s been a lot of hard work and frustrating times. She attends speech therapy once a week to work on sounds and speaking.

"The speaking part is the hardest for her," said Christi.

Another difficult thing has been finding her place. Her deaf friends didn’t understanding why she wanted the surgery to hear, and now she has hearing friends who don’t completely understand the deaf side of her life.

Samantha is caught between the deaf and hearing worlds.

"Some of my deaf friends are really into the deaf culture and didn’t understand why I wanted the surgery," she said. "They made me feel bad about doing something against the deaf."

Some of them think “just because we are deaf doesn’t mean we are dumb, we just can’t hear,” Samantha said. "We’re the same as them. We have the same thoughts as they do and we like the same things they do."

Samantha does have friends from both worlds and its a challenge for her to make sure they understand what is she is going through, and that she really fits in both groups.

"The deaf culture has its own rules and culture and same with the hearing culture. She’s just caught in both doors and she’s trying to find her way," said Christi Haupert.

"(Deafness) is the life she knows. Now that she can hear, it’s cool, but at the same times she’s scared."

Samantha is just like any other teenager. She is involved in school organizations such as Beyond Silence, a group for deaf/hard of hearing and hearing students, her church and she loves woodwork class.

As for her future, Samantha plans to start her own woodworking business and wants to attend college.

"Thank you to all the people who have supported and help me," Samantha said.

"(Since the implant) I have heard my first Christmas carol, my favorite 'Silent Night.' I can hear my shoes making noises on the tile floors I can hear water running and the wind blowing and my grandma on the phone when she says, ‘hi Sam’," she wrote in the essay she read at the Lions convention.

"I hear the blinker noise in the car when I turn the corner. I hear all my little cousins when they call my name."

By Jennifer Kivioja