Te Waiwaha Prangnell as a baby hearing sounds as her cochlear implants switch on.
A 7-year-old trilingual girl from Rotorua, Te Waiwaha Prangnell, communicates and plays thanks to cochlear implants.
Te Waiwaha’s mother, Te Ao Prangnell, says the implants helped her daughter be a “normal kid”.
Loud Shirt Day on October 18 raises funds for The Hearing House and Southern Cochlear Implant Programme.
A 7-year-old trilingual Rotorua girl can sing, play football and communicate thanks to bilateral cochlear implants.
Te Waiwaha Prangnell was born profoundly deaf. At 6 months old, she had surgery to get cochlear implants, supported by The Hearing House charity.
Her mother, Te Ao Prangnell, now says the implants helped her daughter be a “normal kid”.
“If you didn’t see the cochlear implants... you’d probably think she was just a normal, everyday kid who loves to run around and sing and dance and play, climb trees.”
A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to a person who is severely hard of hearing or profoundly deaf.
One cochlear implant implanted privately costs between $55,000 and $60,000, The Hearing House chief executive Claire Green says.
Rotorua girl Te Waiwaha Prangnell was born with profound deafness and has cochlear implants.
Surgery and the subsequent “switch-on” is only one part of the cochlear implant process. Clients need to learn how to use the technology and interpret the new sounds through ongoing audiology and speech and language therapy.
Loud Shirt Day is on October 18 and is the national fundraising campaign for The Hearing House and the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme – charities that have been providing specialised care to more than 2000 people with cochlear implants for the past 20 years.
Prangnell told the Rotorua Daily Post she and husband Ben Prangnell found out their daughter was deaf after she failed a hearing test as a newborn.
A second hearing test at 5 weeks old confirmed Te Waiwaha could not hear anything, she said.
The drama and dance teacher said her husband had already figured out something was wrong when their daughter would sleep through loud noises.
Te Waiwaha Prangnell, pictured in 2019 at 2 years old. Photo / Stephen Parker
Prangnell was “in shock” when they got the diagnosis.
“I also went into sorrow or grief, thinking, ‘Oh no, what’s this going to look like for my daughter who can’t hear anything’. I thought she would be disadvantaged.”
The whānau made a plan with The Hearing House for Te Waiwaha to get cochlear implants.
She had the surgery in September 2017 at Auckland’s Southern Cross Hospital, then two “switch-on” sessions.
“The second session is when she really heard something for the first time... it was amazing.”
The whānau has spent the past seven years working with the Hearing House, learning strategies to help with speech and language for Te Waiwaha .
“I’m very thankful that we have an organisation like the Hearing House that has been able to guide us and help us through and navigating how to bring up Te Waiwaha,” her mother says.
Prangnell says there was no family history of deafness and Te Waiwaha’s older sisters Arahinga, 11, and Rangitapu, 9 can hear.
“It’s all new to us.
“But for me it was a positive change, because I got to learn a whole new language of sign language. And our daughter is now trilingual. We do sign language, speak te reo Māori and English.”
Te Waiwaha goes to Rotorua Primary School and is in the Māori Rūmaki Reo bilingual unit.
Rotorua girl Te Waiwaha Prangnell enjoys playing football.
Cochlear implants allowed Te Waiwaha to communicate, sing and play football, Prangnell says.
“Seeing her progress from the time she started talking to now is huge.”
Without the implants, “the only way she would be able to communicate is through sign”, which would be “frustrating” as the language was not well-known in New Zealand.
Giving deaf children ‘a choice’
Prangnell says she attended meetings with parents of deaf children where they could see how happy Te Waiwaha was and help them with the decision to get cochlear implants.
Prangnell was passionate about normalising cochlear implants and had helped educate Te Waiwaha’s fellow students, teachers and the community about her implants with posters and conversations.
The Hearing House’s Green says cochlear implants gave deaf children “a choice” of learning an oral language.
She says Loud Shirt Day was a time to celebrate the charity’s work, raise its profile, educate people about cochlear implants and have fun by putting on a loud shirt.
Green says the charity relied on fundraising and donations to bridge the shortfall in public funding and to go “above and beyond” with its services.
Programmes and services offered by The Hearing House and the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme included assessment, cochlear implant surgery, listening and spoken language therapy, audiology, outreach programmes for regional and remote patients and whānau support and counselling services.
Supporting Loud Shirt Day
When: Friday, October 18
Who: Loud Shirt Day is the national fundraising campaign for The Hearing House and the Southern Cochlear Implant Programme.
What: Wear your brightest outfit for a day and raise vital funds to help Kiwis who access sound through cochlear implants.
Correction: This story has been updated to say cochlear implants are supported by The Hearing House charity instead of funded. The Hearing House does not fund cochlear implant surgery at The Hearing House. Surgery is either covered by public or private assessment. The Hearing House assists with rehabilitation and specialised care.
Megan Wilson is a health and general news reporter for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post. She has been a journalist since 2021.
