By Lucile Ross
When people do happen to notice her cochlear implants, Lucile simply explains they are devices to help her hear. Most people think they’re pretty cool, she says.
Having cochlear implants has always been what I knew, so there wasn’t any adjustment I had to make. It’s all pretty normal to me.
Sometimes people will say things like, “Oh, I like your earrings, they light up,” because there’s a little green light on the behind-the-ear part of my cochlear implants. Then they look and realize they’re not earrings. Or they’ll notice something glittering in my hair, which are the processors.
I just explain that they are devices that help me hear, like how glasses help people see better. Most people think they’re pretty cool.
When I was younger, there was this one time at gymnastics where I jumped into the foam ball pit and both processors came off. The whole class had to get in and help me look for them. We found them though!
And another time at the beach, I was boogie boarding and a wave hit me and one processor got swept away. The company replaced it. I know there can be situations when I have to make sure to take care of them, like when I asked the hotel for a shower cap when we were on vacation and about to tour a waterfall with a lot of spray.
I started taking French in kindergarten. I can read and write it to a certain level, and that’s a class where listening skills are really important. We are hosting a French student this spring, and then I’ll do a homestay in France this summer. I’m excited to explore France with mes implants cochléaires!
When I was in preschool, my teachers would wear a Bluetooth microphone and I could hear everything they said since it piped right into my ears. But they walked around the class talking to other students and it got distracting. And I always worried that I’d overhear them speaking to other teachers, or even while they were in the bathroom! So I stopped using the mic. I mainly make sure to sit right at the front of the class so I can hear the best without other students in front of me.
For sports, I play tennis, soccer, and basketball. For tennis, you’re running around a lot, stopping and starting, but it’s not enough to make it difficult. Soccer’s the same. I usually have my hair in a really tight ponytail that keeps the processors in.
The only sport that concerns me a little bit sometimes is basketball. It’s a contact sport, and people’s arms and hands are up by your head. Once playing basketball I had the ball, dribbling it, and a girl on the opposite team kind of shoved me.
My ear—I call them my ears because they basically are!—had fallen out onto the ground. I was still holding the ball while I grabbed my ear and put it back on. The ref called out, “Traveling!” So I got penalized for saving my ear. Now I use fashion tape to help keep them in place.
From wearing a bonnet as a toddler to now wearing a tight ponytail during sports, Lucile knows how to constantly safeguard her “ears.”
Last summer at camp I tried synchronized swimming. The thing is, you have to hear the music, but I don’t have my devices on in the water, of course. So I memorized all the counts, all the motions, and we even won a prize.
My advice for anyone starting this journey is to make sure that you know your limits so you don’t get into a situation that you can’t handle. Plus, make sure the people you’re interacting with know what you’re going through so they can help, especially teachers. For example, my best camp friend knows in the water I don’t have my ears on and can’t hear if something’s wrong, so she looks out for me.
People don’t realize that without my devices, I can’t hear at all. When I wake up in the morning before I put them on, I’m completely deaf.
But with them on, I hear just like everyone else. It’s just part of who I am.
Lucile Ross lives in Georgia with her family. Her parents shared their family’s cochlear implant journey here and in the Spring 2026 issue of Hearing Health magazine.
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My advice for anyone starting this journey is to make sure that you know your limits so you don’t get into a situation that you can’t handle. Plus, make sure the people you’re interacting with know what you’re going through so they can help.