i think it's great that there are so many success stories out there.
Deafness is not something I deal with home or with me immediate family. i am a teaching assistant and one of our students is deaf i met him first when he was almost four and his implant was only a few month old. for him the implant was frusterating and annoying at times, when he's mad he'll through it at you, but even then he was very dependant on it. he loves it, he loves hearing new sounds and to see his face light up at the sight of those new sounds is one the single most greatest sights to witness.
i learned sign for him, and I am still learning for him. He's had the implant almost two years now and his speach has improved greatly. I have tons of contact with him outside of school his grandmother and I are good friends, he's just an awesome little guy. At his last doctors visit just a day ago, they updated his (sorry i don't know all the terms correctly we have our own terms, that's a five year old for ya)"battery pack" so the whole unit is now on his head he no longer has to carry the battery pack on his hip with a wire hanging loose (which a bad thing with a class full of EC kids)during the visit the specialist said he may be a good candidate for a bilateral cochlear implant. more tests need to be done first.
from what i understand it could be a really good thing for him, all of his deaf sign teachers and family are excite at the though alone. his translater however is mad at this idea and i can't understand why? it saddens me that a woman who is supposed to have this childs best interest at heart for a large portion of his day would not want him to better his quality of life. i can understand why a deaf family memeber that cannot use implants or aids wouldn't want another family memeber to use tham also, it may be their only special link to each other. but this woman has no family tiesand i can't understand why she'd feel so strongly one why or another.