13-year-old Amanda Eshleman has been struggling to hear clearly for the past ten years of her life. Over time, she’s gone deaf in her left ear and is slowly, but surely, losing her ability to hear in the right. This process is continuing to happen, even though she’s had a hearing aid fitted.
Amanda was diagnosed with enlarged vestibular aqueducts, a medical condition that occurs in children and causes deafness over time.
For Amanda, it was a slow and steady decline. Every time she’d lose a bit more hearing in her right ear, she’d turn to her Mom and say, “I can't hear, Mom. I don't like this. I can't hear.”
Amanda’s mother, Betsy, would bring her daughter back to the doctor for more tests to get the hearing aid appropriately adjusted – but this process would only repeat itself. Amanda would say, once again, “I can’t hear, Mom. I don’t like this.”
Betsy admitted, “It’s hard for a mom to watch.”
At school, Amanda was forced to sit at the front of the classroom, but she still had to ask the teacher to repeat instructions and read lips.
Just last month, Amanda was offered a potentially life-changing procedure: having a cochlear implant inserted into her left ear. The electrode array would help Amanda pick up sounds electronically, rather than acoustically as human ears naturally do.
Betsy said, “We went into it kind of cautious…we don't know if it will work, if her brain will be able to recognize these signals. So we were a little bit nervous, trying not to get our hopes up as we walked in.”
Earlier this month, on December 1, doctors finally activated the implant.
The young teen burst into tears when she finally heard her mother’s voice again, saying, “Hi, baby.”
Both mother and daughter began to cry. The surgery was a huge success.
“I was very excited, but I was a little nervous that it wouldn't sound how I wanted it to sound, or it would be different than I thought it would be,” Amanda said afterward. "Then they turned it on and it was awesome.
“Every day gets better. I just realize how lucky I am.”
Watch the incredible moment the implant was turned on for the first time:
