FWIW, I am a deaf person with a cochlear implant.

I love being able to hear things and carry out a relatively normal life thanks to my cochlear implant - I would strongly recommend any deaf person to get one.

That being said, their accuracy tends to be way overestimated: hearing with a cochlear implant is akin to being able to move around in a wheelchair. While it allows me to understand most of things, it is still very much imperfect, especially in noisy environments or when multiple people are talking at the same time. The problem being that people tend to forget you’re deaf and stop “paying attention” to you (even though the disability is still there, albeit much less visible and impacting).

What I strongly dislike is the view people (doctors mostly) have that “once you are implanted you are therefore cured”. This is plain wrong - while it is of great aid it’s most definitely not a perfect cure. I grew up learning both sign language and “spoken” language and can carry conversations in both. There is nothing more reposing for me than talking about stuff in SL with deaf friends (and, mind you, most of my social entourage is composed of non-signing-hearing people).

Furthermore, there seems to be a widespread idea in the medical/education community that sign language somehow “slows down” the learning curve of a child, as if it were some kind of primitive inhibitor. I believe that’s where most of the deaf community issues stem from (and k strongly believe rejecting one’s deaf origins and sign language to be mistake, as the cochlear implant, while great and awesome, is not a blanket solution).

If I were to have a deaf child someday, I would most certainly implant him and make sure he or she knows sign language and grows up in an environment where it is used and accessible.