hope.
3.21.18
During my second semester of PT school, my hearing started going hazy. I have sensorineural hearing loss and have used hearing aids for most of my life, but this was different. I visited my audiologist because I thought my hearing aids were broken. She basically told me my hearing had gotten even worse. It was so bad that hearing aids wouldn’t be able to cover that range of loss.
I couldn’t function at school at all. I couldn’t understand what any of our lecturers were saying, and just did homework or read the textbook during class instead. I had anxiety attacks before group-work because it was so hard for me to participate. How can you participate if you can’t understand what anyone is saying? It would take so much energy just to concentrate on one person speaking at a time.
I got to a point where I just gave up. I thought I was getting better, only to find out my hearing was actually getting worse. I felt so hopeless, so stuck. Imagine waking up every day without hearing, and thinking that you have 1.5 years of school left, a career to work towards. How are you going to get through it?
I used to go home at lunch every day and just cry and cry. But one day, a flip switched inside me. I thought to myself, “I’m not going to get any better crying in this bathroom. I need to get my shit together.”
I found this organization called the Gift of Hearing Foundation. They help people like me get funding for cochlear implants, but they were shutting down very soon. I contacted them in October 2017 and the founder told me they were closing their doors in December and wouldn’t serve anyone after that. But this was a six-month application process and procedure.
I sent in my application anyways. A few weeks before they were set to close, I got the good news. They would cover me. Brand new cochlear implants, the most up-to-date, newest developed. And they were going to cover 100% of my surgery.
I just bawled. I’m so blessed. It’s just amazing. If I had waited until December crying in that bathroom, this never would have happened.
Sunny Lee
Class of 2019