Hearing Loss Magazine January/February 2013 - 42

By Sally Edwards

rom the time I was a teenager, planning to become a nurse, I also dreamed of joining the Peace Corps and using my nursing skills in Africa or India, preferably both. I graduated from Presbyterian-University Hospital School of Nursing in Pittsburgh in 1963, and promptly got married. We had four lovely children in six years. So much for the Peace Corps! Parenting and nursing took all my love and devotion. I was a member of our church’s mission department for years, serving as liaison for several ministries in India. I kept praying that one day I would be able to nurse some of the sick and needy people in other lands. In my late thirties, I lost about half of my hearing. My hearing loss was described as a sudden unexplained hearing loss. I kept hoping my hearing might return as mysteriously as it had gone, but that was not to be. Today I know I should have gone immediately to my ENT doctor. I now often tell others that’s the first thing to do if you have a change in your hearing. Do it STAT! With treatment some or all of the loss might return. I have used hearing aids for many years and literally could not function without them.

Here’s a story about plans interrupted but, in the end, Sally was able to do what she always dreamed of.

For the Love of Nursing In 2001 the prayer I’d been praying was answered dramatically. A health care team from my church, Menlo Park Presbyterian of Menlo Park, California, was going to Kiev, Ukraine. I felt called to go but almost immediately became afraid they would not accept me because of my hearing loss. When I was welcomed into the team, I was overjoyed. We treated recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, children in orphanages and homeless children. It was heartbreaking to see these young kids living in holes in the ground next to heated pipes just to try to stay warm. I saw the love they were receiving, being fed and given medical attention, but I was devastated. Gradually I came to see that each act of kindness does matter to each person one touches. I knew I had found a new love and would be going on many more medical teams. I returned to Kiev two more times. On the third trip no doctor was able to go. So I, a psychiatric and chemical dependency nurse, became the nurse clinician, affectionately called “Dr. Sally.” My doctor friends from previous trips helped with my preparation but the “Great Physician” was my constant companion. This experience has been the highlight of my nursing career. In 2003, I lost more of my hearing while in treatment for Hepatitis C which I had acquired from a needle stick at work. It was time to retire. But a few months later, an announcement jumped off a page of the church bulletin. It read “Medical mission trip to China.” I knew I was to go. I had no interest in China and really wanted to go to Africa or India. But no, it was to be China. This began my connection to China which has taken me there nine times since that first trip. Helping China’s Children Just hours into our first day’s clinic I knew why I was in China. We were seeing students from a school for disabled children. By day’s end we’d seen 39 teenagers, all with profound hearing loss. Just three had hearing aids. My friend and colleague, Dr. Peter Yorgin, and I were convinced we needed to do something. We came up with a plan. Upon returning to the United States, I contacted Dr. Joe Roberson, my ear specialist and CEO of the nonprofit Let Them Hear Foundation of Palo Alto, California, to tell him what we’d seen and learned and to ask his advice. He said, “I want to help.” We asked our church for and were given a large gift to pay for five cochlear implants and new hearing aids. We collected more than 125 used hearing aids. We are still getting some even today. Dr. Joe has since made numerous trips to China to implant children with cochlear implants and to teach and help physicians develop the skills to perform the surgery. It’s been a privilege to be a small part of this work. (Amazingly I received a hybrid cochlear implant* in 2005.) Other work we have done in China involved treating and showing
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*A hybrid cochlear implant uses two technologies—a hearing aid which amplifies sound and acoustically transmits the sound through the middle ear to the cochlea as well as cochlear implant technology which converts sound to electrical impulses directly stimulating the hearing nerve in the cochlea.
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Hearing Loss Magazine January/February 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hearing Loss Magazine January/February 2013