It has been decades since he was able to hear out of his right ear, but thanks to an updated cochlear implant, now he can hear his wife and family clearly.

WTOP was inside the doctor’s office as that implant was being turned on. After 20 years, this man can hear his family better thanks to a state-of-the-art implant

Several weeks postsurgery, Dr. Michael Feuerstein sat there hearing chimes and beeps at different volumes trying to calibrate his new cochlear implant for his hearing. He will eventually be able to change some of those settings using an iPhone app.

“Are you ready? OK,” said Melissa Blumgart, an audiologist with MedStar Health in Northwest D.C.

“OK sir, can you hear my voice?” she asked.

“I hear it, and I hear mine,” he responded.

That’s the exact moment the state-of-the-

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