Wednesday, June 30, 1999
Implant lets a deaf nun hear again
BY ERIN GIBSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sister Mary Lawrence Crisler, right, reacts as audiologist Sharon Hepfner tests her hearing.
(Yoni Pozner photo)
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Sister Mary Lawrence Crisler heard a voice Tuesday afternoon. It sounded strange at first — a bit scratchy, she said.
But for the woman who is deaf and has devoted her life to helping others, hearing her own voice was the miracle she had been praying about for years.
“I don't know what heaven is like,” she told Sharon Hepfner, an audiologist at University of Cincinnati Physicians. “But this has got to be close to it.”
On Tuesday, Dr. Hepfner programmed a device called a Cochlear implant that allowed Sister Mary Lawrence to hear again after 20 years of continuous hearing loss.
The implant's computer processor and electrodes stimulate hearing nerves.
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Myles Pensak, an ear, nose and throat doctor at UC Physicians, implanted the device June 1 in Sister Mary Lawrence's skull above her left ear. A pink scar about 3 inches long marks the spot in her silver hair.
The 66-year-old nun was born hearing in Grand Rapids, Mich. She could hear at age 17, when she joined a convent there. Her hearing gradually worsened to deafness, and she communicated by reading lips.
“I didn't realize how many things I had cut out over the years,” she said.
She stopped going out with friends, who got frustrated because she couldn't hear them. She couldn't watch much television, and she couldn't hear music.
She heard her first three musical notes Tuesday while Dr. Hepfner programmed her implant.
“Do, re, mi!” she said and let out a full-bodied laugh. “I haven't learned to sing the scale in years.”
Her implant consists of a group of two nickel-sized discs surrounded by clear plastic and a short, skinny tail. It has a computer processor and electrodes that work together to stimulate the nerves that let Sister Mary Lawrence hear. She wears another device on the outside of her ear that looks like a hearing aid with a small plastic disc attached.
Once it is programmed, patients can hear again, Dr. Hepfner said. Sounds are “like scrambled eggs” at first, but become clearer within minutes as the brain relearns to decipher sounds.
Patients' hearing improves as months pass. Patients come back weekly to have the device tuned.
Cochlear implants have been used for more than 20 years, but now are more advanced, Dr. Pensak said. He's done about 60 implants since 1984.
Sister Mary Lawrence learned about the implant during a doctor's appointment this spring. She realized in December she had lost more of her hearing, but she never called herself “deaf” until Dr. Pensak asked her how long she had been that way.
Dr. Pensak suggested the implant, paid for by Medicare, because hearing aids would no longer help her.
She said the implant and her new ability to hear would help most in her job as administrator of Pelletier Hall, a retirement home and infirmary for about 22 aging nuns with the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Ft. Thomas, Ky.
“Not being able to hear them as they become more disabled, it's hard,” Sister Mary Lawrence said.
After her hearing was restored Tuesday, she said she planned to go home and see whose voices she could hear. She also wanted to try to hear music.
“Before my father died, I asked him to ask the Lord to do something about my hearing,” she said.
Her 95-year-old father died Feb. 28 in Cincinnati.
“I really think I got my miracle.”
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