 My name is Colleen Powell. My son Liam has two cochlear implants. He was implanted in one side at age three and the other at age seven. He has the Flex 24 electrode and he wears the sonnet processors most of the time but he loves the rondos with the water wear for swimming. When Liam was first implanted, he was three. He didn't have really any language at that point and very quickly after he got his first implant, not only did his language kind of explode but he himself was asking for a second implant. He recognized that he could hear much better with the implant as opposed to the hearing aid. And so it was four years before we could make that happen but after surgery we were, he'd just come out of surgery, he was still kind of asleep and we were in the recovery room with him and he sort of reached up and he felt the bandage on his head and he said, oh, they did the implant and I said, yeah, he goes, I didn't even feel it. And he was kind of sleepy and he just said, thanks mom. And I was like, for what, buddy? And he just said, for letting me get this implant and just that he recognized how much it helped him and that he was so thankful for it and really wanted it himself just felt like a real miracle to me. Well, the first thing I would say is there's a lot of hope and while it may feel really scary and really unknown right now, there's so much great stuff ahead for your kid. And the advice I would give is just to, in any way you can, find some community, find some other parents, find adult cochlear implant users just so that you get a little bit of a picture of what's ahead and then to trust yourself. The thing that I wish I'd known was that I was on the right path. I think when you make these decisions for your child, for their life, I mean, the implant is hopefully gonna be there forever for him, it feels really overwhelming and you wonder am I making the right decision? Is this the right thing? And I felt really insecure and really unsure of myself and now on the other side of it, I just wish I had trusted myself a little more and I'd known that we were on the right path, we were making the right decisions and that it was gonna turn out just better than we could have imagined.