by Thom Riddle

The controversy surrounding cochlear implants for deaf folks is well known and hotly disputed among all three major groups of people who do not have what is considered by physicians to be normal hearing. The three groups, of course, are the hard-of-hearing (HOH), the oral deaf, and the Deaf. I am a member of the first two groups, HOH with my CI but deaf without it. However, I have no intention of arguing for or against a cochlear implant for anyone but myself, for it is a highly personal choice and no one has a right to determine for anyone but himself whether it is a desirable choice. This is my story of my early flying experience, my decision to get a cochlear implant and its effects on my life.

Thom Riddle with his co-owned 160 hp Cherokee 140 undergoing its annual.

I am a private pilot and earned my license during one of the heyday periods of aviation, more precisely 1966 at the ripe old age of 19, while a student at Georgia Tech. For the newer, younger pilots who may be wondering what flying was like back then:

• There were only two kinds of airspace, controlled and uncontrolled.
• You could fly into and out of the Atlanta Hartsfield International airport without a transponder.
• Headsets were almost unheard of, and virtually all pilots were losing some hearing because of it.
• Super Cubs were nearly as common and cheap as almost any airplane.
• Almost every pilot had at least some tail-dragger experience.
• I paid $4.00 an hour for an instructor and $7.00 an hour for a straight-tail Cessna 150, wet!
• I paid $17.00 an hour for a Mooney, wet!

At the time, I had a moderate hearing loss in my left ear and close to normal hearing in my right ear. On my first go around, I had no problem getting my unrestricted 3rd class FAA medical certificate. But as I aged, the otosclerosis took its toll and I had to get a SODA (statement of demonstrated ability) to pass my medical the second time. I had accumulated about 160 hours when I earned my FAA Mechanic certificate with Powerplant rating in 1972 and had plans of continuing on to get the Airframe rating but suddenly stopped. I had gotten an interview with Southern Airways, where I had hoped to get hired as a mechanic. After the interview they said they would love to hire me if I passed their physical. I went to their physician and passed all tests with flying colors except the hearing test. They would not hire me because of my hearing.

That is when I quit flying. There were several reasons that I quit flying, the least of which was not getting that job. I had recently gotten married and my wife had no enthusiasm or interest in flying whatsoever. My finances were strained because she did not work outside the home and had expensive tastes.

After graduating from mechanic school at the top of my class, I was aghast to discover how little a person had to know to earn a mechanic certificate to legally work on airplanes, pronounce them airworthy, and return them to service. This really scared me!

My absolutely fantastic flight instructor was killed in an Aero Commander 500 (high wing twin) flying a cargo charter flight. Apparently he was practicing engine out procedures and let the airspeed drop below Vmc (minimum control speed with one engine out) which re-sulted in a flat spin from which he was unable to recover.

My passion for flying was never quenched but put on hold for thirty years. Meanwhile, I had a child (with my wife's help, of course), divorced her (my wife, not my daughter), remarried to my current wife, raised my stepchildren, worked for thirty years as a mechanical design engineer, and gradually went profoundly deaf.

In December of 1996, the day after Christmas, I got my cochlear implant. I was part of the clinical trial for the Nucleus 24 channel implant and the first one in the state of Georgia to receive this new model. I have nothing but great things to say about the surgeon and especially the audiologist that I worked with during my nine-month- long rehabilitation experience. However, I had both good and bad luck in my initial experience with the implant.

First the bad news. I was one of perhaps five out of 15,000 implant recipients (that is only one in 3,000!) who suffered increased tinnitis due to the cochlear implant's electronic stimulation. Of course, it only happened when it was turned on, so I had the choice of some hearing with the tinnitis or deafness without it. According to most studies on the subject, many implant recipients have reduced tinnitis after getting the implant. Over a period of several months we experimented with several programming strategies and finally worked out one that did not result in increased tinnitis. Now, I never have any implant-induced tinnitis.

Other negative consequences: I used to be a musician when I was young and hearing but the speech processor does a very poor job of translating musical sounds into something my poor brain can recognize as music. So I have lost virtually all ability to enjoy music. That is a real bummer! My ability to understand speech in noisy contexts is not as good as when I could use a hearing aid.

The good news: I can now hear birds, crickets, tree frogs and many other sounds that I had not heard for decades. So I now enjoy the sounds of nature much more than I could when profoundly deaf. More important, I can understand speech now without total dependence upon lip-reading. I can use the telephone in quiet environments as long as the person I am speaking with has reasonably good diction. When I plug the audio output from any electronic device directly into my speech processor (the computer that takes the sound and converts it to something my auditory nerve can use) I can hear and understand quite well with no conflicting sounds at all. One of the best features is that I can turn it off when I want perfect quiet.

With my regained hearing I decided to try to get back into the air. This was in August of 2001. I am certain that I would have done this anyway, but the newfound confidence, which was the direct result of my improved hearing, reawakened the long dormant impulse to fly again. At the time, I had no idea that so much had changed in the thirty years since I had flown but knew for certain that there was much to learn and re-learn. My wife and I had recently bought a small house in Buffalo, N.Y., to be near our older daughter and the grandchildren during the summer and did not know the area well.

Fortunately, there are three small airports within an hour's driving time of my new home. I found them on the map and chose one at random and went to visit. There was no activity whatsoever at this airport, just two guys hanging around in the office. I introduced myself and told them my situation and the younger one, who obviously had not been born when I flew last, perked up with the hope that I would be renting his plane and needing instruction from him, as well.

I then told him that I was deaf and needed to get a 3rd class medical before I could start flying again. He looked crestfallen and told me that deaf people are not allowed to fly. Of course, that is when I told him about the IDPA ... er, uh, DPA. I bought the current local sectional and a Facilities Directory and went home to see what had changed while I was busy raising a family.

What a shock! It seems I recalled only a small fraction of the symbology on the sectionals and was completely confused by all these circles around the larger airports. Boy, did I have a lot of work to do! I prioritized the tasks and decided that I better get started on the 3rd class medical, so I researched the local AMEs (they used to be called flight surgeons) and found one less than one mile from my home. I called his office and made an appointment for the following week.

I did not know it when I made the appointment but it turned out, this guy, who was an inactive pilot himself, was new to the ranks of the AMEs and I was the first "patient" of his to come in for an FAA physical. If I had known that when I made the appointment, I would have gone elsewhere. I figured the process was going to be hard enough without having a newbie AME doing the physical. But once committed I stuck with him. Upon arriving for my appointment the nurse did the normal pre-exam stuff, including taking my medical history and asking about the drugs I was taking, while the doctor started looking up in his AME manual what he was supposed to check for. My eyes and blood pressure checked out fine and he asked me about my "hearing aid" and I explained that it was not a hearing aid but a cochlear implant and he confessed he had heard of them but had never seen one before.

So I explained how it worked and how it was completely different from a hearing aid. He said it must work pretty well because I had no problems understanding him. But just to be safe, he wanted to talk to Oklahoma City about it before proceeding. He called the FAA and according to the doctor the FAA told him that I was the first cochlear implant recipient to ever try to get a FAA medical certificate without the radio use restriction but they were encouraging me to do so. Oh boy! It looks like I am going to be a pioneer with the Feds! From past experience with government agencies, I then knew it was going to be a long time before I was flying again, if ever.

While reviewing my medical history and the drugs I was taking the doctor asked me about my history of hypertension. I told him I had never had hypertension and he agreed that my blood pressure was fine now but assured me it was because of the two anti-hypertension drugs I was taking. I told him I was not taking any drugs for hypertension because I had never needed any. He then told me that the Triamterene (a diuretic I was taking for my Meniere's disease that ultimately caused my total deafness) had not been prescribed for hypertension but to relieve the congestion in my ears. He then asked about the Terazosin, which is also commonly prescribed for hypertension. I am taking that to reduce my slightly enlarged prostate, not for hypertension. Well the red flags were risen and there was nothing that I could do about it. The AME told me I had to get my physician in Atlanta to send him recent records and tests concerning my "hypertension."

As I was about to leave his office, he told me since I was his first FAA patient and he did not know what others charged for FAA physicals, he was going to charge me $50. I subsequently found out that the average for this is $75 so I thought that at least I saved $25 with this guy.

Upon arriving home, I wrote a letter to my Atlanta physician at the Atlanta VA Medical Center. Yes, I am a disabled veteran and my Atlanta physician works for another federal agency. Isn't life grand? I requested the data the AME wanted before submitting my application for the certificate to the FAA in Oklahoma City. Fast forward a few weeks ... the terrorists attacked the United States and the FAA is under siege to rid the skies of the bad guys. Sometime in late September, I called the AME's office and asked if they had received the information that I had requested from my Atlanta physician. The clerk looked and said that they had not.

So I wrote a nastygram to my Atlanta physician and he wrote back giving me what-for since he could prove that he had sent the data immediately upon receiving my request and he included copies for me. It turns out that my Atlanta physician is an inactive pilot too and that he fully understood the problems with dealing with the FAA.

So now it is late October and I go into the AME's office to give the clerk a piece of my mind. She showed me the file and I found the data that had been sent to them, exactly when the Atlanta physician said he sent them. The clerk said "Oops! Sorry about that." I told her that I would wait while she put all the information together with the application and that I would hand carry the package to the post office. She said she did not have time to do it now, so I asked to see the doctor and explained my predicament that resulted directly from his employee's incompetence. He understood and directed her to prepare the package and to give it to me, which she did.

If I were to relate all that transpired from this point on it would take way too long and bore the readers beyond all reason. So, I will condense the remainder. I had three rounds of correspondence with the FAA, one of which resulted in my Atlanta physician writing a letter to the FAA indicating that I did not have hypertension nor did I ever have hypertension.

The FAA's response was that I had to have a complete cardiac work-up including a stress test and wearing a Holter cardiac monitor for 24 hours. I also had to have a current hearing test by an audiologist. My Atlanta physician was very cooperative and arranged for all these things that the FAA wanted for CYA purposes, I'm sure. Since we were headed back to Atlanta for the winter anyway, I was able to comply with these requests over the next several months and ultimately gave the FAA all the data requested in May of 2002, only nine months after going to the AME. I waited and waited and then finally contacted AOPA to get help with this. The AOPA called the FAA and inquired about my application. Miracle of miracles! The very day the AOPA called, the FAA had approved my application! The lady at AOPA called me with the news but did not know if there were any restrictions on my new medical. I paced the floor for three days waiting for the mail and finally, it came.

CI user Thom Riddle's 3rd class medical specifies only hearing amplification and does not restrict him from flights requiring the use of radio.

As it turned out my cochlear implant was the least of the FAA's problems. They still think I have controlled hypertension and I will have to submit proof of coronary fitness on every future 3rd class medical application, which for me will be every two years.

Notice that my medical is dated back in August of 2001 when I went to the AME, not when the actual test data was collected. So I am already into my second year on this medical even though I have had use of it for only three months! I guess I should start applying now for the one due in August of 2003!

Thom's Statement of Demonstrated Ability indicates that his waiver was issued without a special flight test.

Post script: The AME billed me for $90 instead of the $50 he told me he would charge when I was in his office. I paid him $50 per our oral contract but he keeps billing me for the $40 overcharge. As you probably guessed, I will not be going back to him, nor paying him the $40 overcharge. After looking at the fine print in the FAA regulations, I discovered that the AME had the discretionary power to issue the 3rd class medical certificate with radio use restriction, which is what I asked for originally. All this hassle could/would have been avoided if I had gone to an experienced AME.

I may be the only pilot in the United States with a cochlear implant and an unrestricted medical certificate that allows me to use the radio in controlled airspace , but I have not been able to verify this. If anyone knows about another cochlear implant recipient with an unrestricted medical certificate, I would like to hear about it. Otherwise I will assume I am the exception to prove the rule.

Although the FAA thinks I can hear well enough to use the radio, I still avoid controlled airports like the plague. Happy flying, y'all.