COCHLEAR IMPLANT USED DEVICE LETS DEAF WOMAN HEAR.(Local)

Byline: Grace O'Connor Staff writer

Almost three years of silence ended recently for Ida DePalma of Waterford when Dr. Donna Wayner of Albany Medical Center waved a brass handbell beside her left ear. "It was so loud it threw me off the chair almost," DePalma said with a smile. "It's just like dying when you can't hear."

DePalma, a 66-year-old state retiree who became deaf from a degenerative bone disease, is the first person to have had a cochlear implant done at Albany Medical Center. The institution is the first in northeastern New York to use the device since it was approved for general use in adults in 1984 by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The two-hour operation was …