Thursday, June 1, 2000
Star's Heart to Heart
James and Kassie DePaiva
One Life to Live on ABC Daytime
Parents can find hospitals that perform newborn hearing screenings at www.hearinghealth.net
or by calling 800-829-5934.
Last May, James and Kassie discovered that their son, James Quentin, was born deaf. The DePaivas say their doctors didn't pick up on their son's condition at birth. They realized something was wrong when JQ was about seven months old and he didn't react to the slamming of their metal door. "He was so visual and so active that we thought, Well, maybe he could hear a little bit," says Kassie. Because JQ was so alert and his pediatrician didn't think anything was wrong, the couple didn't feel the need to take any action until he was about a year old. The DePaivas admit that there was a little denial on their part.
Oddly enough, James, who plays Max Holden on One Life to Live, had a storyline in the mid-1990s in which his character discovered that his twin sons had both been born with the same condition. James decided to speak to the show's technical consultant from the Lexington School for the Deaf. She put him in touch with an audiologist at the Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx and got them in touch with the League for the Hard of Hearing. "Because she knows everybody involved in this area," says James, "she opened all the doors."
The DePaivas decided to give JQ a cochlear implant. It is a surgically implanted device that resembles a hearing aid. The implant transmits sound over a wire to auditory nerves. JQ was severely to profoundly deaf when he was diagnosed at 13 months old. At the time, he was too young for the implant and had to be fitted with high-powered FM hearing aids. JQ's hearing has improved dramatically since he switched to the implant, say the DePaivas. He can now hear higher frequencies and hears as well as Mom and Dad.
Parents can find hospitals that perform newborn hearing screenings at www.hearinghealth.net or by calling
800-829-5934.
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