A rare condition mixed with a baseball injury resulted in single-sided deafness for Anthony. Now using a cochlear implant and skills acquired through auditory speech therapy, he aspires to play in the big leagues. Read his story below:
“Most people take sound for granted. We didn’t—because for our son Anthony, he was born with normal hearing.
During a later medical issue, and clinical work up, we discovered an incidental finding of bilateral enlarged vestibular aqueduct, or EVA – a rare cause of progressive hearing loss requiring audiology and ear, nose and throat follow up to monitor his hearing. In Anthony’s case, after several falls, his hearing progressed from moderate to severe sensorineural loss in his left ear, requiring a hearing aid in March 2020.
The injury that changed everything
In October 2022, while playing baseball with friends, Anthony was accidentally hit in the face with a metal baseball bat, and then half of his world became silent. Later audiology testing confirmed profound sensorineural hearing loss with zero percent word recognition without the hearing aid.
Choosing the right cochlear implant
At first, many people—even professionals—told us not to worry. ‘He has one good ear,’ they said. But as parents, we knew better because of Anthony’s diagnosis. We also saw the fatigue on his face after school. Anthony was missing the soft whispers, the jokes and the directions spoken on his deaf side. We watched him withdraw socially with other children, and we refused to settle for half-access.
We also did not rush to surgery, because this was elective. But after extensive research and talking to many cochlear implant experts around the country and listening to our son’s choice, we chose to proceed with Anthony receiving a cochlear implant at Johns Hopkins, our local hearing health facility.
When a temporal bone CT scan was ordered before surgery, it revealed a new diagnosis of bilateral incomplete cochlear partition type II and bilateral EVA. Anthony’s surgeon believed that the Cochlear™ array was the best option for Anthony. He explained that selecting another brand could result in less-then-optimal surgery due to partial insertion, resulting in less access to sound. We trusted his opinion and scheduled Anthony’s cochlear implant surgery April 2023.
Activation day: a new beginning
Selecting Cochlear was a great decision. Everyone at Cochlear, from the start, was phenomenal! From their groundbreaking technology to their compassionate patient care team, excellent technical support for troubleshooting and exceptional customer service, Cochlear became more than a brand to us—they became part of our family.
Anthony quickly recovered from the cochlear implant surgery, and a few weeks later in May 2023 it was activation day! This brought tears, as he turned toward us in a way he hadn’t recently and said he heard ‘beeps’ and ‘dashes.’ Learning to hear again for Anthony was very hard, and mentally fatiguing.
Life beyond the implant: baseball, gaming, and ninja dreams
We were fortunate to hire two excellent listening and spoken language specialists (LSLS) and certified auditory-verbal therapists (AVT) to perform streaming1 therapy remotely in Anthony’s left ear. Slowly, the beeps and dashes progressed to hearing words by robots, to sounding more normal and understanding sentences. Two years later, he had greater than 90 percent sentence recognition! We were told that Anthony was in the top tier of positive clinical outcomes for a child with EVA and single-sided deafness!
The Cochlear Nucleus® 8 Sound Processor and iPhone® Bluetooth® connectivity features were a game changer for my son. One of Anthony’s LSLS/AVT’s suggested we get Anthony an iPhone, so he can easily stream YouTube and perform his AVT therapy and assist with developing self-advocacy skills.
With the Nucleus Smart App2 we’re also able to control the Nucleus 8 Sound Processor programs and volume settings. This allows us as parents and Anthony to control the ForwardFocus3 feature in different environments.
We have seen a dramatic difference in baseball, changing programs to allow vital sound localization during games! Before the cochlear implant, Anthony would hit an extra-base hit, and just stop at second base, when the crowd was screaming for him to keep running further, because he could not hear. His cochlear implant has helped him hear the sounds on the field, be more aggressive on the basepaths and succeed with his peers. In addition to baseball, Anthony enjoys ninja training and streaming video games to his implant.
School challenges and our fight for access
Our family adjusted too. We became more sound-aware, more attuned to battery levels and Bluetooth connections, more educated about school FM systems and classroom acoustics. We learned the language of access and how to fight for access because the world beyond our home hasn’t always been understanding.
Anthony attends public school in New Jersey. Even with our expert medical team recommending auditory-verbal therapy (AVT), teacher of the deaf (TOD) direct services and audiology booth testing for school FM equipment that was not functioning properly with his cochlear equipment, the school resisted. They dismissed expert recommendations. They refused audiology booth verification. They claimed AVT was ‘medical’ and not educational. After that was dismissed, they claimed because my son was at academic grade level and that he didn’t need the services anyway.
So we fought back. We filed complaints. We gathered expert reports. We took the school to court multiple times to secure what Anthony was legally and ethically entitled to – a fair chance to hear, learn and thrive at school like his peers.
Closing thoughts: hope, advocacy and a bright future
Our legal fight is not just for Anthony – it’s for every deaf child who’s told to ‘just get by’ with one good ear. It’s about recognizing that bilateral hearing access is foundational to learning in school.
His cochlear implant didn’t just change Anthony’s life – it changed our family’s path, purpose and perspective. We believe the sky is the limit, and Anthony hopes to one day, be the first MLB professional player to make the big leagues with a cochlear implant! If he does not make it to the pros, he has ambitions to be a professional YouTuber!”
If your child has been diagnosed with single-sided deafness, a cochlear implant and auditory verbal therapy may help change their life, just like Anthony. Learn about your options today!
4 5 6 7 8- For information regarding the compatibility of Cochlear’s Sound Processors with True Wireless, Apple or Android devices, visit www.cochlear.com/compatibility
- Nucleus Smart App is available on App Store and Google Play. For compatibility information, visit www.Cochlear.com/compatibility.
- ForwardFocus is a clinician-enabled, user-controlled feature within Custom Sound Pro Fitting Software. ForwardFocus can only be enabled by a hearing implant specialist. It should only be activated for users 12 years and older who are able to reliably provide feedback on sound quality and understand how to use the feature when moving to different or changing environments. It may be possible to have decreased speech understanding when using ForwardFocus in a quiet environment.
- In the United States and Canada, the Cochlear Nucleus Implant System is approved for use in children 9 to 24 months of age who have profound sensorineural hearing loss in both ears and demonstrate limited benefit from appropriate hearing aids. Children 2 years of age or older may demonstrate severe to profound hearing loss in both ears.
- Apple, Made for iPhone logo, iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
- The Bluetooth® word mark and logos are registered trademarks owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such marks by Cochlear is under license.
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- © 2026 MLB Advanced Media, LP. All rights reserved.
