Mackenzie's Story   Mackenzie was born a healthy and happy baby in June, 2002 and passed her new born hearing screening in the hospital.  As the months passed, we noticed that she was not talking as early as her sister and that she made this high pitch screech.  Doctors, friends and family told us not to worry as all children develop at different rates.  At 13 months, our family spent time with a family friend who is in special education.  At the close of the weekend, she was brave enough to encourage us to get Mackenzie's hearing check as she was seeing signs that something might be wrong.  That began our journey into hearing loss and joy in finding cochlear implants and Cochlear America. Over the next 9 months we had a wide range of testing done to determine in the end that Mackenzie was profoundly deaf due to a connextin gene mutation causing her to have no hair cells in her cochlea.  That meant that hearing aids would do her no good.  After hours of on-line reach, we attend a seminar on cochlear implants that immediate decided that this was the best choice for our daughter.  We consulted with our surgeon and determined that Mackenzie was an excellant candidate for implantation.  In July of 2004 she was implanted in her right ear and, after pushing our insurance company, implanted her left ear in November of 2005. Mackenzie is a well balanced, loving, and active young lady.  With speech and language therapy, she is on-track with her 4 yr peers and planned to start kindergarten with her hearing peers in August, 2007.  The cochlear implants are truly a blessing in our lives and if anyone every questions why all they have to do is listening to Mackenzie sing her favorite song or talk on the phone and they will understand.        Watchi