Stella Chugg is – as her mom puts it – “all girl.”
She does gymnastics and loves music and singing. She’s always requesting songs in the car. She loves playing dress up and princess and barbies. She loves helping her mom in the kitchen.
At just four years old, Stella is a bright light to her parents and her little brother Archie – even though she has already been through so much.
When she was eighteen months old, Stella’s parents noticed that she wasn’t hitting her speech milestones.
“She was making lots of sounds, but they weren’t sounding like her peers,” said Stella’s mom, Kennedy.
Stella failed her newborn hearing screening, but there was no real concern about her hearing at the time. Some newborns don’t pass their hearing test for reasons other than hearing impairment.
While Kennedy wasn’t too concerned, it was always in the back of her mind.
When Stella was two, Kennedy enrolled her in early intervention program to help with her speech. She also expressed her concerns about her daughter’s hearing.
“After years of advocating for her, we finally got a hearing test, and learned she only had fifty percent of her hearing,”
Stella was fitted with hearing aids when she was two and a half. Eventually, her hearing got worse and the hearing aids were no longer useful.
After genetic testing at Primary Children’s Hospital, she was diagnosed with Pendred syndrome, a genetic mutation that causes inner ear malformations which lead to progressive hearing loss.
After this diagnosis, Stella’s audiologist recommended the Cochlear Implant Program, and Neil Patel, MD.
Dr. Patel is a neurotologist and skull base surgeon. “Most people probably don’t know what neurotology is,” says Patel. He describes the field as a subspecialty within ear, nose, and throat surgery that requires 2 years of additional training and a separate board certification. Neurotologists are the most experienced hearing implant surgeons: at the University of Utah and Primary Children’s Hospital, the group performs over 250 cochlear implant surgeries per year. During his post-graduate training as a resident, Patel was always drawn towards pediatric cochlear implant cases. He loves getting to work with Stella and other patients like her.
“There’s no other sense you can give back,” he said. “For babies who are born deaf, and for patients like Stella, this operation completely changes their life.”
Cochlear implants have been around for a long time. The contemporary implant was first approved for adults in 1985, and for pediatric patients in 1990.
A cochlear implant has both internal and external components. The internal device is comprised of the receiver and the electrode array. The external portion has a microphone and speech processor. The internal and external devices are connected via a magnet, so nothing comes through the skin.
Stella was approved for cochlear implants when she was three years old. Kennedy and her husband did everything they could to help prepare her – not just for surgery, but for how life might be after surgery.
Meeting Dr. Patel helped ease their concerns.
“I had heard amazing things about Dr. Patel from other parents and families at Stella’s school,” said Kennedy. “We were so excited that he was her surgeon.”
Stella had surgery on September 29, 2025. When she left the hospital after surgery, she had a large bandage around her head that covered both ears. She wanted to decorate it with stickers.
“She has been smiling through it all, and it’s been amazing to watch,” said Kennedy. “You’re going to love your kids no matter what, and then you watch them do hard things.”
For the first ten days after surgery, Stella’s focus was to heal, not to hear.
“That was the hardest part,” said Kennedy. “She was coming out of anesthesia, her head hurt, and she couldn’t hear us.”
They used sign language, and Stella used her incredible lip-reading skills when needed.
“She’s amazing,” said Kennedy.
Once her incisions healed, Stella’s audiologist programmed her cochlear implants and Stella was good to go. Usually this happens a week or two after surgery.
“Kids have very moldable brains, so they adapt very quickly to the sound they get from a cochlear implant,” said Patel. “If they get implanted at the right time, you may never be able to tell that they had hearing loss.”
Kennedy and her husband are blown away by the change they have seen in Stella since her surgery.
“She loves her cochlear implants,” said Kennedy. “Since surgery she has progressed so fast, her speech has come so far, and we just couldn’t be happier.”
Beyond happiness, there’s also a huge sense of relief.
“You’re not really sure what life will look like when it’s just a totally new thing to you,” said Kennedy. “The fact that Stella is just like her cousins her age, and kids in the neighborhood, it’s just really huge to us.”
Stella attends the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind, at the Ogden campus.
Kennedy (and Stella) love her current school.
“I love that she’s exposed to all different types of cultures,” said Kennedy. “Some kids have a lot more than just hearing loss, so she’s able to learn and see a lot. She has just taken on a lot for a being a four-year-old.”
In 2027, Stella will go to mainstream school for kindergarten. This would not be possible if she did not receive cochlear implants.
“We always want her to have support, so if she ends up wanting to stay at the Utah School for the Deaf and Blind then that’s an option,” said Kennedy. “We really want to give her as many tools and as many options as possible.”
Before Stella’s diagnosis, Kennedy had only met one Deaf person. Her husband had never met anyone with hearing loss.
“At first I wondered if I would be able to support Stella through something I can’t relate to,” said Kennedy. “But we have learned so much and have so much support from her doctors and the community. It’s been such a blessing to have that throughout Stella’s journey.”
Kennedy is a food and recipe influencer with more than 200,000 followers. One of her favorite parts of her job is sharing Stella’s journey with others.
“I get to share how Stella is doing, and that she’s just a normal kid,” she said.
“Sharing her progress and helping other people through similar experiences is definitely my favorite part about what I do.”
Although the journey has been a whirlwind, Kennedy and her husband are extremely grateful for the care that Stella received from Dr. Patel, who made an impact on Stella beyond the cochlear implant surgery.
“Stella plays doctor at home and says, ‘I’m Dr. Patel,’” said Kennedy. “You would think that after a three-year-old had a major surgery she might be afraid of the doctors and she still loves them. I just have to thank University of Utah Health.”