AMAZING GRACE

Grace Tiessen is a bilateral cochlear implant user (see cochlear implant definition, page …) and a volunteer at House Research Institute. She received her first implant in 2005 and the second in 2010. Grace does so well with her implants that in conversation with her, most people are completely unaware that she has any hearing problem at all.  At age 92, Grace is vivacious, active, and a willing test subject in the Department of Auditory Implants and Perception. Her current assignment, the most recent of several so far this year, is a difficult task. She spends many hours seated at a desk in a sound proof booth, listening to musical sounds which are generated through a speaker. She then indicates responses on a computer. The goal is to improve perception through auditory training to make music listening more enjoyable for future cochlear implant users. 

Grace probably had a moderate hearing loss very early in life. No one ever told her that she had a hearing problem. She was two years ahead in high school and at the top of her class. But as classes got larger her grades began to slip. Grace enrolled in the College of Chemistry, at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1936. In those days, students were seated alphabetically, putting Grace at the back of most lecture halls. Soon she was placed on probation. “Had I been told that I had a hearing loss and allowed to sit in the front row, I would have been all right. My grade point average became so low that I changed my major to English. I barely graduated in 1940. I never received counseling or any advice. I don’t understand why someone didn’t wondered why a student with top grades in high school would do so poorly in college,” she said.

In 1965 she became aware of her hearing loss. She asked her HMO for an audiogram and began wearing hearing aids. “Hearing loss is a leading public health issue, and I wonder to this day why the medical profession does not routinely test everyone’s hearing, just like blood pressure and cholesterol, and suggest that they get hearing aids, if necessary,” she stated.

Grace seldom met other people with hearing problems. Her own hearing loss caused her to become ever more isolated and alone. In 1984, she discovered Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH), now known as Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). Finding SHHH gave her a sense of belonging. Among this group she met other people like herself, with whom she could relate and she longer felt alone.  In gratitude, to this day she is heavily involved with HLAA. Since 2001, she has edited The Hearing Loss Californian, a 20-page, color, quarterly publication that is distributed to California HLAA members, audiologists and hearing aid dispensers in California, and others interested in hearing loss issues.

Grace says, “If I had normal hearing, by now I would be warehoused in a fancy retirement home playing cards. Hearing loss has given me a wonderful and interesting life with more friends than I could imagine. I will be forever grateful.” Grace is a popular test subject with all of the research staff at House. She has lots of great stories to tell, is always hard-working and conscientious, and is fun to work with. As one staff member expressed: “I can only hope that I will be as active as Grace is and age as gracefully and wonderfully as she has.”