No amount of words can say how grateful I am
Retired Nurse and grandmother, Lyn Wild describes the difference Bone Anchored surgery and her current Ponto 3 Superpower sound processors has made to her life. After being born with Goldenhar syndrome, which caused both a non-functioning middle ear on her left side and lifelong ear infections on her right, Lyn states that “No amount of words can say how grateful” she is for Bone Anchored technology that enables her to live life, in her own words, “like anyone with full hearing”.
Lyn struggled in her early life with limited hearing however managed “fine” without any assistance until her early 20s when she was at work. It was here she was fitted with her first hearing aid, which did little help for her over time. She eventually became reliant on her family members to repeat things for her and found little joy in going out; “I got others to do the listening for me, my children would repeat what people said (I was better "tuned in" to them). There was no fun in going out to do anything. People would talk to me from too far away for me to be able to lipread and I'd have to work so hard to get the gist of what anyone was saying.”
In 1999, Lyn was finally offered bone anchored hearing technology, which, she described, made a “huge difference, fitted on my worse side it meant sound was conducted to the left inner ear for the first time ever.” Lyn also remembers her 3 year old daughter telling her in the morning; "STICK THAT ON, I WANT TO TALK TO YOU!" as she passes her sound processor. Lyn was given further improvements to her hearing in 2004 when she received her second implant, and became bilateral.
In 2008, Lyn was introduced to the Oticon Medical Ponto system for the first time, having been asked to trial out the Ponto Pro prototype, and has been a Ponto user since. Lyn fondly remembers when she was being upgraded to her Ponto 3 Superpower devices: “I had to hand the left one back to the audiologist while she discussed something with a colleague, I suddenly realised that with only the right Ponto (the side I have mixed loss) I could hear her clearly! I started to cry, I hadn't had clarity of speech via just my right device for many years. It was emotional.”
When putting her Ponto 3 Superpowers on in the morning, Lyn says her “day comes alive” with sounds that are a “full artists pallet of colour” to her ears. Every morning, Lyn is woken up by her hearing dog, Clay, and is aware that the surround sounds are very muffled until her “Pontos release her every morning from a numb silence”. For this reason, she affectionately calls her Pontos her “best friends”. Describing the sounds she hears every morning after putting her devices on: “Immediately I hear voices from my upstairs neighbours, clear but unintelligible. I hear my storage heater whirring. I hear my dog moving, padding his paws on the floor. I hear the metallic "clink" noise as I lift his collar to put it on ready for the day, I hear traffic outside. I hear each time I pick something up as it moves against the surface of my bedside cabinet, I hear my feet move on the floor. “