Hear Me Out

It could have been a scene from the year’s big feel-good movie.

Little Ian Patterson from Stanton, who is 3 years old and has been deaf since birth, had a chance to hear. If the money could be found. An unproven but promising ear implant might let sound into his otherwise silent world.

Local news articles about Ian prompted a fund-raising campaign. Public reaction prodded his health insurer to pay up. The implant surgery went well. In November 1983, Ian sat at a table in a Los Angeles clinic, oblivious to the technician who attached a wire just behind his left ear.

He was playing with toy animals when the technician said, “Ba ba ba ba.” Ian looked up, surprised, then delighted. He had heard his first sound. The photograph of his beaming face rippled across the news wires and dampened eyes as far away as Europe and Japan.

Less than a year later, his mother, Amber Patterson, reported big changes in Ian. He now went to movies and sat glued to the screen; before, he had been bored and fidgety. He now tried to form words; before, he merely mumbled. His mother said she was certain he would eventually overcome the greatest challenge to the deaf and learn to speak.

This is where the credits ought to roll, sending you out of the theater with that happily-ever-after feeling.

But Ian, now almost 19, and his family still work hard at what comes easily to others. At home, only his mother is as expert as he in sign language. His older brother, Bo, is fluent but has moved out on his own. Ian’s stepfather and his younger brother and sisters use only the most basic sign language and improvisation. With strangers, he must resort to pad and pencil--or merely pointing and gesturing.

His speech is indistinct to those not familiar with it, and his signing sometimes makes strangers uncomfortable.

“Maybe your voice sounds funny and you look weird because you’re excited, and they don’t understand that,” said Ian through signs interpreted by his mother. “Maybe they’re thinking I’m a little retarded. But I’m not retarded. I just can’t hear.”

“Ian’s deafness has definitely made family life more of a struggle,” said his mother, now Amber Toliver, 41. “Even just sitting down at a meal, we have to stop and answer his questions: ‘Why are you laughing? What are they talking about?’

“He and I are a lot closer because of his deafness, but for the family . . . it makes it harder for them to be close. And grandparents and cousins, they don’t know how to sign at all.”

To stay in touch with his father, who moved to Arizona to work as a prison guard, Ian uses a TTY telephone, which has a typewriter keyboard like a computer. A telephone operator acts as translator between Ian’s type and the caller’s spoken language. Though slow, the system allows Ian to use the telephone.

Former teachers say Ian is creative and intelligent but that he often is frustrated when he misunderstands others or is misunderstood.

His frustration extended to his implant as well, which he began to resist at 7. By 11, he refused altogether, saying it bothered him. He still insists that he wants no part of modern implants that can produce much more distinct sound sensations.

“I am proud to be deaf,” he said. “It’s natural, I don’t want to change. I am happy right now.” He works at a small food dye factory and he hangs out with friends, although his parents don’t approve of them. He wants to make his living as a graphic artist.

His mother concedes that raising a deaf son has been taxing, that fear of deafness accompanied each new birth, that “I’ve made mistakes, I know it.”

*

Subtle hints went unnoticed. But when a dropped drinking glass shattered beside 5 1/2-month-old Ian and he didn’t react, Amber knew. Tests confirmed Ian was profoundly deaf, and the doctor referred him to the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles.

One of Amber’s first visits was to the institute’s counselor.

“You mourn the loss of the normal child you thought you had,” she said. “I felt bad that I felt that way. And there are family things: ‘It must be your fault.’ ‘No, it must be your fault.’ It was kind of tough. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.”

Marital difficulties followed, but she and her husband, Robert, then a construction worker, decided to postpone their divorce until after Ian’s surgery for a cochlear implant, an electronic device that was undergoing clinical trials in children.

A small electronic device was surgically implanted under the skin behind the ear and its single electrode positioned near the auditory nerve. A sort of hearing aid worn on the outside sensed sound and induced a small electric current in the implant, which stimulated the nerve. (Modern versions have up to 22 electrodes.)

The result was perceived sound like a staticky, poorly tuned radio, according to users who had once been able to hear. The rhythm of speech could be heard, but the words were indistinct. Even so, it was hoped the sounds would eventually help Ian read lips and learn to speak. But for Ian, they would do neither.

Three months after Ian’s surgery, Amber, then 28, moved out on her own. Single with two young children, one of them deaf, she worked as a hospital pharmacy technician and did not expect to be courted any time soon. But within a few weeks she noticed that Tony Toliver, 23, a bowling acquaintance of her parents, was spending time watching her bowl.

They married within a year.

“It scared me a bit, Ian being deaf--that’s a big responsibility,” Tony said. “But he was a great kid.”

“To have a man take that on was very lucky,” Amber said. “He and his parents went to signing classes.”

Ian’s older brother, Robert, knew what it was to adapt to a deaf sibling. He became Bo because that was easier for Ian to pronounce. He went to school to study sign language.

But the children to come (Shannon in 1984, Danielle in 1986 and Josh in 1990) entered a different world.

“They don’t ever say, ‘I’ve got a brother who’s deaf.’ It’s just normal life to them. They sign things or point,” Amber said.

“Josh was the best. He would take Ian by the hand and show him whatever he wanted. Danielle was really mean. Ian would be sitting there watching TV and she’d walk up behind him and whack him upside the head to get his attention. He never retaliated.”

Tony said that even today, “Amber’s the only one who can really communicate well with him. If anyone’s done anything special, it’s been her. She just makes the sacrifice.”

She spent years studying sign language, he said. Because his friends at a school for the deaf lived far from their home, she often spent most of her weekends ferrying Ian for visits. When he played soccer, baseball or football, she had to be there to sign.

By age 9, however, Ian was beginning to show frustration at not being able to communicate easily with other boys. Though he would often play with those in the family’s Anaheim neighborhood, he sometimes was rejected as well.

“He’d come inside and play Nintendo by himself,” Amber said. “He’d come in and say, ‘It’s not fair, it’s not fair.’ ”

He was angry, too, about the electronic device he had to wear to make his ear implant work. He wanted to stop using it, but Amber insisted. Later she authorized a second implant when the first became defective.

“It was a lot to ask of a little kid,” she says now. “But we weren’t sure that he was not going to benefit from it.”

But to Ian, the clicks and buzzes the implant sent to his brain were annoying and unhelpful.

“It didn’t really work,” Ian said. “It never helped at all. Sometimes it hurt.”

Like the time 11-year-old Ian walked into a store and passed electronic portals meant to detect shoplifters. Ian’s implant reacted, throwing him to the floor. “It felt like a shock to me. . . . It made the inside of my head feel crazy,” he said. (Manufacturers say modern implants don’t have this problem.)

Soon after, Amber gave in; the hearing device was put on the shelf. The implant and its crescent-shaped scar behind Ian’s left ear still remain. “I wish I could have it out,” he said.

Still, Ian was a well-adjusted child, Tony recalled.

“He was always happy, always willing to help,” Tony said. “When I had to do something in the yard, he was always there. Any adult he came in contact with raved about him. I would never have picked Ian to be the problem child.”

But Ian has, indeed, had problems.

*

Amber remembers Ian’s willfulness from his earliest years. When he was angry, he would turn off his hearing device “and he’d show you it was off.” He would close his eyes and sit on his hands, his equivalent of covering the ears to shut out others.

The same willfulness, along with his intelligence, made him a standout among the deaf students drawn from across Orange County to the programs for the deaf at Venado Middle School and University High School in Irvine. His former principal, John Levy, remembers him as a leader and able student but also an occasional problem.

But Amber says Levy intentionally paired Ian with a troublemaker in hopes Ian would guide the boy to the good, but it was Ian who changed.

Levy said he did no such thing, although it was common practice to ask students to befriend newcomers to the school.

“There was a sort of anger in Ian,” Levy said. “He was kind of rebellious and liked to argue. Sometimes that’s good. . . . But he had a hard time finding the right time and right place.”

Ian began hanging around with and dressing like skinhead wannabes, Levy said, adding that deaf students, with their less-developed language skills, often do not understand the implications of such things.

“He may walk like he’s tough and shave his head, but he’s really just a skateboarder,” Levy said.

But Ian refused to change his friends or his skinhead image.

He was a sophomore when his life violently changed direction over a misunderstanding between the deaf and the hearing.

During a physical education class, one of Ian’s friends was looking at another boy, a hearing student who thought he was being “mad-dogged”--being stared at as a challenge. Levy said a deaf person’s gaze can sometimes be misinterpreted as staring because they must be more observant.

The incident led to a confrontation after school when Ian accompanied his friend to the school bus. Instead of shouts, the hostility was transmitted by notes.

The others thought Ian was acting as his friend’s protector, Ian said. They passed him a note: “Do you have a beef with my homeboy?” Ian said he was confused, couldn’t understand what they were saying, knew they wanted to fight and was afraid.

Ian said he gave them a note intended to postpone the confrontation until the next day so a fight could be avoided altogether. Levy said the other boy read it as a threat that skinheads would beat him up the next day and threw a punch at Ian.

“This was a football player, a big, strong kid,” Levy said.

Although Ian said he blacked out, he thinks he was punched several times. Levy said he was told just one punch was thrown. Ian suffered a concussion and a broken nose and required stitches inside his mouth. The football player was sent to another school. Ian transferred from the school, too, but at his mother’s insistence.

He transferred to Magnolia High School near his Anaheim home, which had no program for the deaf and no other deaf students.

“I think we could have made it safe for him, but she was hurting,” Levy said. “It’s a shame. I think we could have helped this kid a lot.”

Among Magnolia’s hearing students and teachers, few knew sign language.

“There was nobody who could sign; I felt changed,” Ian said. “I feel like I lost my friends.” But he added, “I learned to like it. I try to be friends with hearing people. I try to be patient, and they try to be patient with me. I need to have someone to talk with.”

Ian pursued that goal aggressively, said his former art teacher Dave Johnston.

“There were [sign language] interpreters available . . . but he kind of resented that. He didn’t want to get singled out. Sometimes he’d overcompensate. He’d get frustrated if other students couldn’t understand him and then get an attitude. I’ve had him frown at something I said and I’d have to explain, ‘No, I’m not challenging you.’ ”

During summer school in 1997, Ian was faced with a group of students who seemed to be laughing at him. He smashed a window with his fist, seriously cutting his arm. Amber said he nearly bled to death.

Ian graduated last June. He still hangs around with the skinhead crowd his parents disapprove of. His stepfather said Ian’s “loser” friends are learning sign language so they can better communicate with him.He recognizes the irony.

“These kids, they take the time to pay attention to him,” he said. “They go out of their way to be nice to him, whereas other kids, maybe they don’t. Why would somebody like that go out of their way to incorporate a deaf kid into their circle? I don’t know. I wish some nice kids would do that.”

Ian’s plans for the future are vague. Johnston, Ian’s former art teacher, said he has the talent to make a living in commercial art. Amber said community college art classes may be next, but they want to wait.

Ian said he wants to learn to drive, buy a car, perhaps share an apartment or rent a room. But his job pays too little to allow him to save, he said.

“He’s only 18,” Amber said. “I don’t know when that maternal cord gets cut, but I think it’s going to be quite awhile. I guess I’m still protective and hold on to him a little longer just to be sure he can do it on his own.”