Embracing The World Of Sound

Man Says Implant Shaped His Life

Nearly 15 years ago, the Virginia Weekly section of The Washington Post published an article about 7-year-old Mark Leekoff, an Annandale boy the article described as "typical . . . bright, full of explosive energy . . . talking, laughing and showing very little interest in sitting still for a reporter's questions."

Leekoff's ability to hear the questions at all was the basis for the story; the boy was born deaf and, at age 3, was one of the first children in the United States to get a cochlear implant, an electronic device that directly stimulates the auditory nerve and allows the recovery -- or discovery -- of some hearing.

Next month, Leekoff, 21, will graduate from Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor's degree in biology. He said in a recent telephone interview that he hopes to enter medical school in the fall to become an otolaryngologist and to give other deaf children the opportunity he had.

Leekoff recalled what it was like when he received the implant. "It was a lot of indiscernible noise. My eardrums had never been stimulated before." He said he had to learn to hear.

He made rapid progress, and by the time he was in fifth grade, he said, his parents thought he was ready to attend public school, rather than the series of schools for the hearing-impaired and the small-classroom private schools he had attended. Leekoff went to Wakefield Forest Elementary and Frost Middle schools in Fairfax County.

After taking Advanced Placement courses and making regular appearances on the honor roll at W.T. Woodson High School, Leekoff graduated in 2004. At Tufts, he has made the dean's list all but one semester and earned the school's Ellen C. Myers award for academic excellence in the face of adverse circumstances.

Leekoff, interviewed by telephone from Massachusetts, said the implant "has changed my life tremendously," and he listed some of the things he can do because of it. "I'm able to use a cellphone; it would have been harder to talk, or to listen to the radio or music. It has helped me be more interconnected, and I feel more normal."

Cochlear implants have been a source of controversy in the deaf community because some see the devices as a threat to deaf culture, including the use of sign language. Leekoff, who said he is fluent in sign language, said that when he was growing up, he was occasionally treated unkindly by other deaf people who resented his cochlear implant.

"I will be never be completely hearing," he said, "but at this point I would consider myself more involved in the hearing community than the deaf community. I do have an appreciation of deaf culture." Leekoff said that if he realizes his dream of becoming an ear, nose and throat specialist, he will offer deaf patients unbiased information about the implants. "I would give them the pros and cons and let them make their own decisions," he said.

Leekoff said that as an implant recipient, he would have a "unique perspective" as a doctor. "Ever since I was probably about 8 or 9 . . . I realized how much this cochlear implant had brought me. And it wasn't just the implant; it was all of those doctors and nurses. I made that promise I would do the same for other people."

He cited his own otolaryngologist, Eric M. Kraus of Greensboro, N.C., as a particular inspiration and said, "I want to be that kind of doctor, to give parents hope for their child."