ROANOKE, Va. -- By the time the flour finally settled, Vera Wilson estimated she'd baked approximately 1,100 pies.

Her initial goal was to make and sell a thousand, just enough to raise the $5,000 she needed to buy her 3-year-old son, Eli, a pair of state-of-the-art Phonak hearing aids, devices not covered by the family's insurance.

So in the fall of 2006, Wilson's kitchen became a command center and, with help from her husband, Scott, some friends and local businesses, "Eli's Pies" took off.

People responded. They sent checks and cards. Some even sent their used hearing devices. And they sent orders.

Lots of orders.

More than a year after the effort began, Wilson said, she still gets requests.

"This Thanksgiving, somebody called and said, 'I saved your number from last year,'" she mused. "I think if you can save a phone number for a year, you can have a pie."

The project eventually raised about $8,900, she said, which went toward a new pair of Phonaks, old medical bills and earpiece molds which, for growing children like Eli, often have to be changed out as frequently as shoes.

"The new ones (hearing aids) were a big help for him," said Kerri Vipperman, a speech language pathologist at Virginia Heights Elementary, where Eli goes to school.

The boy added new words and phrases to his vocabulary: "Thank you." "No." "Please." And the invaluable "ice cream."

And that would be a great place for this story to end, a concise and happy conclusion, a testament to the power of a mom's love.

Unfortunately, when Eli started back to school in the fall, Wilson said they noticed problems.

Words Eli had learned didn't come as easily, or they faded away altogether. In October, tests confirmed his parents' fears.

Despite the new devices, Eli's natural ability to hear dropped from 85 percent to 15 percent from May to October.

"Eli most likely has what we call nonsyndromic hereditary hearing loss," said Dr. Bradley Kesser, the otolaryngologist who treats Eli. "Even though neither of his parents has hearing loss, there are about 45 different genes whose mutation can cause hearing loss."

Kesser also believes Eli has auditory neuropathy, a condition in which the cochlea functions, but the auditory nerve has difficulty carrying the signal to the brain.

To combat these problems, Eli is now scheduled to receive a cochlear implant.

"We didn't go into this lightly," said Wilson, who last year had opted against implants because at the time the procedure was more invasive than Eli's needs required. "I feel we have truly exhausted all our options.

"In doing the cochlear implant, you totally lose all natural hearing. The risk is he loses all natural hearing in the hopes he'll gain 90 percent."

Eli was to go the University of Virginia last week for a procedure to have internal and external devices implanted in one ear. Although insurance did not cover the hearing aids, it will cover about 90 percent of the roughly $70,000 implants and procedures.

The operation and recovery, Kesser said, are relatively painless.

Only the right ear will be augmented at first, to see if the implant is accepted and functions properly. It won't be activated for about 30 days, then the levels will be modulated weekly.

"By February, we'll know if he can hear with it," Wilson said. "By June" -- one month after he turns 5 -- "he should be fully amplified."

Even if the devices work, Vipperman said, Eli will still need further therapy.

"You're teaching them developmentally how to hear like a hearing child hears," she said of implant recipients. "They may get frequencies they have not had before. He has got to be taught how to use the information he's receiving."

Vipperman said it's difficult to gauge success rates with young children and implants, but said, "The ones it works for, it's a bea.jpgul thing. It's fabulous."

According to Kesser, when the devices are activated in a nonhearing child and they encounter sound, "most of the time, you see the eyes just get big, because it's a completely new experience for them."

Over the past year, Eli has grown noticeably taller and his hair has darkened slightly, but he's apparently lost none of his infectious high spirits. His mother said he's excited about the upcoming procedure. Eli has a friend who has implants, and he recognized pictures of the external components when he saw them in a brochure.

For her part, Wilson said she's not upset that her pie-making efforts didn't pay off as she'd planned.

"This gave me some processing time," she said. "It's been an amazing spiritual walk.

"All I've prayed for, for the last two years, is that I want him to hear."

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