'This means everything': Community comes through to buy replacement hearing device for family
CBC
Members of a London, Ont. family are elated after the community came together to raise $12,000 needed to buy Gaston Rodriguez a tiny device that will have a massive impact on his quality of life.
"This means everything to us," said Monika Rodriguez after learning that an online fundraising campaign raised the money to pay for a device that allows him to hear. "Seeing Gaston suffer all this time was very difficult. This is everything. Sometimes we don't value what it means to be able to hear."
As CBC News reported last month, Gaston Rodriguez has spent more than two years in total silence after a processor that works with his inner-cochlear implant was stolen.
Gaston, who was born in Mexico and emigrated to Canada with his family in 2017, suffered permanent hearing loss as a side effect of contracting meningitis as a toddler.
Unlike hearing aids, which simply amplify sound, cochlear implants use a sound processor placed behind the ear. The processor captures sound signals and sends them to a receiver surgically implanted under the skin. The signals provide the wearer with the sensation of hearing by bypassing the damaged part of the inner ear.
Gaston's implant was installed in 2013 in Mexico. But after he arrived in Canada, the processor needed to be replaced. Staff at the Cochlear Implant Program at London's University Hospital managed to get him a used processor to work with his implant but when it was stolen in 2019, Gaston was left in complete silence as the family could not afford a replacement.
Efforts to seek funding sources to replace the processor ran into roadblocks, many to do with the fact that the family is awaiting permanent residency status.
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