"Is that ...," Dan said, pausing for a second. "Is that birds I hear chirping outside?

His wife just laughed.

Dan Hegarty had spent most of his life unable to hear the sounds that most of us take for granted. The ring of a cell phone, the hum of an air conditioner, the buzz of a microwave, the slow rumble of a washing machine churning in the background. He couldn't even hear his wife's voice clearly.

No, he wasn't ignoring her.

"It's amazing what he can hear now," says Karen with a smile.

Thanks to the miracle of modern science, the Florence High School assistant football coach can now hear even a whisper. Maybe not as clearly as he would like, but his hearing is getting better every day, all due to a microchip that was surgically inserted into his head just over a year ago.

Hegarty had cochlear implant surgery in October 2004. A cochlear implant is a small electronic devise that is rooted in the brain, behind the ear. It has changed the lives of thousands of people around the world who were either deaf or hard of hearing. Many who never thought they would hear have suddenly been introduced to a fabulous new world.

The world of sound.

"When I first got the implant I started hearing tons of sounds, but because I hadn't heard them before, I just didn't know what they were," Hegarty said. "It takes time to adjust.

"When I first got it, everything was so loud. I told the doctors "Turn it down, turn it down.' They worked on it, trying to get it right. They did a great job. Now everyday I'm hearing things that I never thought I'd hear again."

Hegarty had been slowly losing his hearing since his childhood days. Doctors weren't exactly sure why he was going deaf, but every year his hearing would get progressively worse.

A solid, hard-working, two-way football player at Florence in the late 1970s and later an all-star defensive end at Mansfield State College in Pennsylvania, Hegarty has never had any serious physical problems other than his hearing loss.

A big, burly man with a barrel of a chest, the 6-foot-2, 230-pound Hegarty still looks like Joe College, even at the age of 45. He rarely thinks twice about wearing a short sleeve shirt and shorts on the coldest of football Saturdays.

Yet, despite all his years of good health, Hegarty had been forced to live with a disability.

A 1978 Florence graduate and an assistant coach at the school for 21 years, Hegarty had been using hearing aids for decades. But every five years or so he would need newer and stronger aids. Costs doubled with each purchase, and each hearing aid never seemed to last as long as the previous one.

Staring down a bill of over $5,000 two summers ago, Hegarty decided to take the advice of his audiologist and look closely at a chancy surgical procedure that might or might not change his life forever.

He hasn't regretted the decision since.

Not only does he have his hearing back, but the cost of the operation was covered under his health insurance.

"The audiologist said she could sell me some hearing aids but they were expensive and the cost would come out of my pocket," Hegarty said. “But she said I could go for these series of tests for a cochlear implant.

"I'll be honest, I had never heard of a cochlear implant before, but she gave me a brief description of it. My wife contacted the University of Pennsylvania and we went through a battery of tests.

"They recommended me as a candidate for the surgery but there still was no guarantee that it would work."

According to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), a cochlear implant doesn't amplify sound like a hearing aid but compensates for damaged or nonworking parts of the inner ear.

Normally, parts of the inner ear convert sound waves into electrical impulses, which are then sent the brain, where a hearing person recognizes them as sound. A cochlear implant works in a similar manner. It electronically finds useful sounds and then sends them to the brain.

There are several different cochlear implants available. However, all cochlear implant systems consist of a microphone, a signal processor, a signal coupler (transmitter and receiver), and electrodes that are implanted in or around the cochlea.

The implant is a tiny electronic device, which is surgically implanted behind the ear. There is a microphone worn behind the ear to capture incoming sounds. According to the American Academy of Otolaryngology (Head, Neck and Throat), a speech processor translates the sound into electrical signals, which travels through a thin cable to a headpiece and transmitted via radio waves to the implanted electrodes in the cochlea.

The electrodes stimulate the auditory nerve fibers to send information to the brain where it is interpreted as meaningful sound.

"The first sounds I remember hearing were electronic sounds," Hegarty said. "I had never heard a cell phone before. I had never heard a microwave beep before. My wife put some cloths in the dryer one night and I remember hearing the buzzer go off for the first time. It was weird. There were all these new sounds that were totally new to me."

The surgery, which usually takes anywhere between three and four hours to complete, doesn't work for everybody. It best helps those who previously used a hearing aid.

Patients who do opt for the surgery can usually notice an immediate improvement in their hearing. However, patients must return for several checkups to adjust the hearing device.

As for Hegarty, a portion of his device can be seen clearly through his short, cropped hair. A wire connects a processor that fits to the top of his ear to a magnetic transmitter that's attached to his skull. The magnet is attracted to the metal portion of the device inside his head. The entire devise can be removed rather easily whenever needed.

"We played football together and he's always had a problem hearing," said John Frappolli, an assistant coach at Florence. "It's been tough. There were times he had to read lips to get by. But now he can hear everything you say.

"He's always trying to do his best no matter what. He's a volunteer coach but he always has time for the kids. It's great to see him doing so well right now. To me, Danny is a warrior."

Actually, he's kind of like The Bionic Man. He just doesn't see as far or run as fast.

"Before, if you talked in a normal voice he really couldn't hear you very well," said senior Joe Spahn, one of the captains on Florence's undefeated football team this year. "Now he's so much better."

Hegarty, who works full time for the Division of Gaming Enforcement, still goes for a checkup every now and then. His surgery went off without a hitch — to the delight of his wife, a devout Catholic who says she always had faith the implant would turn out to be a blessing.

As time goes on, doctors have told the Hegartys that Dan's hearing will continue to improve, although the implant may need to be updated eventually.

No problem.

"I'm never going to have normal hearing like most people, I know that," Hegarty said. "But I'm so glad I had this done.

"It's added a better quality to my life that I never thought possible. Not only to my life, but my wife's life. And that's something that I'll always be thankful for."

By Jeff Offord
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/109-11242005-574948.html