Ear Community and Oticon Medical help 8 year old New Jersey girl hear during COVID-19

Pictured: Isabella with her mom at her audiology fitting for her 2 donated Oticon Medical Pontos in New Jersey, April 8th, 2020.

Meet Isabella, Ear Community’s newest bone anchored hearing aid recipient! Isabella lives in New Jersey with her family, originally moving from Venezuela. She is 8 years old and was born with bilateral Microtia and Aural Atresia. As Isabella started school, she began struggling with her hearing due to having hearing loss in both ears. As it turns out, Isabella has many advocates looking out for her, who are in her corner.

Isabella is in 1^st grade. Shortly after beginning school, Isabella was able to have a hearing test conducted through the school system. Isabella’s school audiologist, Dr. Stephanie Garcia, helped Isabella obtain two loaner Oticon Medical Ponto 3 Superpower hearing devices to help her have access to sound at while at school. Isabella thrived, she just lit up with positive facial expression and truly enjoyed hearing sound through these hearing devices. Isabella’s teacher even reported her participating in classroom discussions, how she wanted to help others and how social she had become.  Isabella also had access to the Ponto 3 Superpowers at home as well. Her parents said that she wore them all the time from morning until nighttime.  They enjoyed being able to see their daughter participate and communicate with everyone around her.

Sadly, the loaner period for these two bone anchored hearing devices ended and Isabella was back to not being able to hear at both school and at home. Dr. Garcia went on a mission to help Isabella obtain access to sound, but this time permanently. Dr. Garcia teamed up with Dr. Laura Sylvia (an educational audiologist and speech-language specialist) along with Mrs. Kerry Shelby (a teacher of the Deaf and Hearing Impaired) to find resources to help Isabella so she didn’t fall through the cracks and revert back to struggling to participate in a hearing world. In February 2020, Drs. Garcia and Sylvia along with Ms. Shelby reached out to our Ear Community Organization to see if we could help.

After receiving Isabella’s application for a hearing device, Ear Community’s Board of Directors were excited to help Isabella obtain two Oticon Medical Ponto 4’s, including a microphone for help hearing her teacher in the classroom, in social situations and while at home. Our organization is happy to help Isabella hear her best so she can thrive, everyday! Shortly after Ear Community offered to help Isabella obtain hearing devices, the world slowly began shutting down from the COVID-19 pandemic, putting Isabella’s fitting on hold for her new hearing.

Through the passionate work from our friends at Oticon Medical and the need to help Dr. Garcia, Isabella was fitted with her Ponto 4’s on April 8^th, 2020. A special appointment was scheduled, even during a pandemic, to help Isabella hear! Ear Community is honored to be a part of the passionate team that made Isabella’s hearing a priority during this uneasy time in the world.

A very special thank you to Alan Raffauf, Vice President of Marketing and Operations for Oticon Medical US, for choosing to donate the two new Oticon Medical Ponto 4 hearing devices and microphone to Ear Community so that they could be donated to help Isabella hear. Thank you to Beverly Ostrowski, Director of Customer Service, with Oticon Medical for helping ship Isabella’s hearing devices. Oticon Medical is a well-respected international hearing device manufacturer that is a part of the “William Demant Group [which has] 100-plus years of experience in audiology and sound processing and established manufacturing and logistics infrastructure. We also wish to say “thank you” to Drs. Garcia and Sylvia and Mrs. Shelby for their tireless efforts to help Isabella hear. Ear Community also wishes to thank all our donors who choose to donate to our cause, helping make life-changing moments like these happen for children and adults in our community.

Isabella – we hope the world opens up to you now that you can interact through sound with all those around you. We are so happy for you and proud of how far you’ve come thanks to hearing device technology and some love and advocacy in the world. Thank you for allowing us to be a part of your better hearing journey. We wish you the very best!
Melissa Tumblin
Founder – Executive Director
The Ear Community Organization
www.EarCommunity.org