HLAA National Hearing Loop Advocate, Juliëtte Sterkens, discusses the first hearing loop that was installed in a church directly because of a suggestion from one of her patients.
JULIËTTE STERKENS: “The first loop we installed was in a church and it came about because one of my patients, her husband passed away very unexpectedly, and she came to my office a couple of weeks later and she's crying and I'm crying. You know, I get very involved and I had just learned about hearing loops and my husband offered to become a hearing loop installer. And she looked at me and she said, ‘Do you know what? I want my husband's memorial money to go towards a hearing loop in the church.’ Well then, of course we cried some more and a couple weeks later, I mean it took a while to get that hearing loop in that church and working right. And we are in the church, it's the first morning, the minister has a beautiful sermon prepared. We're sitting in the back of the church and in walks Russ, one of my patients, and he is extremely hard of hearing. And his daughter is with him and everybody's excited. The hearing loop is going to be in church and the service starts and Russ looks back, and I'm going, ‘Yep, turn on your telecoil,’ and this is what happened. Russ's head just goes up and he goes, ‘Whoa, whoa I can hear him! I can really hear now!’ And he turns around goes like this and I look at my husband and my husband just kind of wiping a tear away and I'm crying and it's like, ‘Oh my God, if I could make Russ hear, I can make anybody hear.’ And that really sold me on the whole hearing loop concept. It's just, when you can make people hear, it's incredible. And essentially I can make people hear. Audiologists can make people hear, but in a very limited range and the hearing loop just makes that hearing aid doubly useful and getting that message out is really what I'm working on.”
Midwest Hearing Loops is a leading innovator in the design and installation of new technology hearing loops. They serve the Upper Midwest with enable thousands of people with hearing impairment to hear more of life from small churches to large performance venue auditoriums and more.
To learn more about hearing loops and the services offered by Midwest Hearing Loops, please see our website: midwestloops.com/
And ‘like’ us on Facebook at: facebook.com/MidwestLoops155/
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