Doctors at the Cleveland Clinic said Mark's hearing loss was so severe that even with hearing aids, he would never speak in sentences. He would communicate through lip-reading and sign language. He would never go to a conventional school.
Devastated, the Goiks sought a second opinion at Children's Hospital
Medical Center of Akron. The outlook was no better.
Eileen Goik, who in addition to 8-month-old Mark had two healthy children at
home, could not bear the thought of her child never speaking. The hospital
referred her to a local support group.
"I thought, great, just one more thing that would take up my time," Goik said,
adding that she reluctantly attended her first meeting.
It changed her life and offered hope for her son.
Today, Mark is a first-grader at St. Vincent Elementary School in Akron. He
attends a class with hearing children. One might say that other than being
deaf, Mark is just like the other children. But that wouldn't be quite true.
Not all the other kids got straight A's on their first report card.
"It's quite a long way from first being told he wouldn't speak in sentences,"
Goik said.
Mark was mainstreamed into a regular class and school because he learned to
listen and speak through the auditory-verbal method of communication, which
Goik learned of at her first support-group meeting.
With this technique, Mark is forced to use what little hearing he has to learn
to listen. Goik learned the method from Dr. Carol Flexer, an associate
professor in the School of Communicative Disorders in the Speech and Hearing
Department at the University of Akron.
Flexer said that when she first met the Goiks, she did not know how successful
they would be in teaching Mark to listen and speak. She said that the goal was
always to mainstream a hearing-impaired child but that fewer than 5% of
children with a hearing loss as severe as Mark's stand a chance of being
mainstreamed.
Hearing aids serve only to amplify what little sound Mark can hear. To teach
him to listen and then speak, Flexer taught Eileen Goik how to use the
auditory-verbal method and how to shield her lips with her hand so Mark could
not watch her mouth and lip-read.
Therapy started when Mark was 1. Goik said she talked non-stop to Mark every
day, but a year passed before he spoke back. Flexer told Goik not to be
discouraged.
Goik said she sometimes tired of spending so much time with her son, but she
knew the results would show one day. She said the constant therapy forced her
other children, Tiffany, 12, and Nathan, 10, to help more around the house.
She now also has a 4-year-old, John.
Goik said the payoff came one day when she was at the grocery store and got
the children snacks at the snack bar. Mark accidentally spilled his drink on
himself.
"He just looked down at himself and then at me and said, 'All wet,' she said,
her eyes misting.
From that moment on, the words seemed to flow. Soon, Mark was attempting his
first sentence. Goik said it came out, "Ah-ah ooh-ooh rain" instead of
"Bye-bye choo-choo train." She said teaching her son how various letters sound
is one of the greatest challenges.
Goik said Mark's speech and listening skills improved dramatically after three
annual trips to the Beebe Center in Easton, Pa., an auditory-verbal clinic.
The family paid $1,000 for each of the intensive one-week sessions.
Goik said she always hoped Mark would be able to attend the same school as his
siblings, and she and her husband were relieved when he passed his entrance
exam. Dennis Goik said his son had succeeded at school because he desperately
wants to be in school with the other children.
"In preschool, he didn't interact much with the other kids, but now, well,
he's really too interactive at times," he said jokingly.
Mark's first-grade teacher is equipped with a special microphone and Mark
wears a receiver. His hearing aids pick up normal classroom sounds and the
microphone allows his teacher's words to be amplified.
Eileen Goik said her other children had been wonderful with Mark. His brother,
Nathan, teaches Mark the things young boys need to know, such as sports. His
sister, Tiffany, tutors him in religion.
Mark, a dimpled towhead with blue eyes, politely answers questions and
interacts with his family. He said he and Nathan are football-card collectors
and own 413 cards. The Atlanta Falcons are his favorite football team. Michael
Jordan is his favorite basketball player. He has 28 classmates at school.
Goik said she was proud of herself for laying a foundation for her son to have
a normal life, but she is saddened that someday she will not be able to hear
the fruits of her labor.
While Mark has been learning to listen and speak, Goik has steadily been
losing her own hearing. She believes that within five years, she will be deaf.
Goik said she first started noticing a hearing loss in her early 20s and has
been wearing hearing aids for 12 years. Since Mark was born, Goik has lost 75
decibels of hearing ability.
She still has some hearing, but she doesn't do well in phone conversations. It
is not known whether the cause of her son's hearing loss is related to her
own. The cause of his hearing loss has not been determined.
"When I look back at the very beginning and I see what he can do now, it makes
me very happy inside. I didn't doubt that Mark would be able to talk - I
doubted that I would be able to teach him," she said.
Flexer believes that Goik's personal struggle with hearing loss may have
helped her son.
"Markie was able to succeed because of the language. Why did he have the
language? Because he had intensive early intervention and a mother and a
family that worked so hard," Flexer said.
"It took a lot of effort, but boy, is it going to pay off," she said. "Markie's
going to have a life - a full, independent life."