Rebuilt by Michael Chorost.

Okay, I have the book and I'm finally going to start reading it. I have two CI boys, but I can't tell you what it means to me to talk with and read about adult CI users' experiences. They can put their experiences into better words than my boys can. This helps me to more clearly understand what they may be going through, what they could be feeling through this whole CI process. I've heard very good things about the book, Rebuilt, can't wait to dig into it.

Here's the info from the inside cover flaps:

"Michael Chorost became a cyborg on October 1, 2001 (oh my gosh, the same nickname we had for Matt, implanted almost the same time, too!), the day his new ear was booted up. Born hard of hearing in 1964, he went completely deaf in his thirties. Rather than live in silence, he chose to have a computer surgically embedded in his skull to artificially restore his hearing.

This is the story of Chorost's journey--from deafness to hearing, from human to cyborg--and how it transformed him. The melding of silicon and flesh has long been the stuff of science fiction. But as Chorost reveals in this witty, poignant, and illuminating memoir, fantasy is now giving way to reality.

Chorost found his new body mystifyingly mechanical: kitchen magnets stuck to his head and he could plug himself directly into a CD player. His hearing was routinely upgraded with new software. All this forced him to confront complex questions about humans in the machine age: When the senses become programmable, can we trust what they tell us about the world? Will cochlear implants destroy the signing deaf community? And above all, are cyborgs still human?"

And then about Chorost:

"Michael Chorost has a B.A. from Brown University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in San Francisco, where he writes about science and consults on educational computing."

It also states that the jacket image is a CAT scan of the author's head, showing his implanted CI. Very, very interesting!!!!! I can't wait until my Matt is old enough to read the book for himself. Someday...