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A Good Listener

After more than 50 years of silence, Round Lake woman enjoys hearing everything

The News-Sun, Today's Living
Thursday, November 23, 1995

Jim Berklan
Staff Writer
When Betty McGraw bows her head for grace today, it will mark the first time she's heard a Thanksgiving prayer as its spoken.

For more than 50 years, doctors misdiagnosed a degenerative ear condition, leaving McGraw virtually deaf for decades. People helpfully screamed at the 61-year-old to communicate.

After recent surgery, however, the Round Like woman has normal hearing in her right ear and about 40 percent in the left (which will be fully repaired in the spring). McGraw can hear so well, in fact, she gratefully won't have to peek around "like a dork" to see when Thanksgiving grace is over.

"This will be one of the best Thanksgivings I've ever had," she said in her high-pitched, fuzzy voice. "Before, I'd sit there and know they were talking but go into a shell."

Know this: McGraw is clearly not in a shell.

She has flowing gray-white hair, bifocals and bright blue eyes. She pads around the house with quick, tiny steps, talking breathlessly about her miracle.

In fact, with her new ability to lead conversations, the question may have switched from "How can you get her to hear?" to "How can you get her to take a breath once in a while?'

"I've lived here for 25 years, and I never heard the Round Lake train. I hear it now!" she says. "I hear birds, my washer and dryer, my furnace going on."


All alone

The sleepless nights are what drove McGraw, albeit unknowingly, to her final solution.

After her husband of 40 years, Frank, died in 1993, one of their daughters moved in. But the daughter moved on. Among other things, McGraw feared she'd be put in a nursing home just because of her lack of hearing.

Earning only $600 a month on disability pay, the widow appealed in desperation to the Lions Club. She wore a headset that blasted television transmissions to her ears only around the house, and she was hopeful there was something similar for conversations. The Lions said they would help but needed doctor certification of an impairment No problem, McGraw figured. Many doctors had told her she was untreatable before. She got another story, however, when she was tested by Dr. William Gatti in Libertyville. His diagnosis: otosclerosis, an overgrowth of the stapes, the smallest bone in the ear (and body).

The solution was a stapedectomy, a relatively common surgery that's been around for 35 years. The stapes is removed and replaced with a 4.25- millimeter (about 0.17-inch) prosthesis that allows the ear to receive sound waves properly.

"She is most unusual," Gatti said, noting he performs 15 to 20 stapedectomies per year but none under these circumstances. There is no malfeasance (by other doctors) involved. She has a combination of nerve loss and conductive hearing loss, a blockage."

Gatti theorized that other doctors may have thought only nerve damage caused McGraw's hearing problems since she worked in noisy factories for 25 years. With a ready excuse, Gatti believes, other doctors stopped looking for other causes, such as blockages. "That (combination) is what makes her unique," Gatti said. "She's a dramatic example (of otosclerosis)." 		"I can hear you!"

Growing up in Chicago, McGraw always sat in the front rows at school and church to hear better. She eventually dropped out of high school because of her hearing difficulties.

She married, had four children and became the family breadwinner when her husband went on disability. She held several jobs and was a school bus driver before going on full disability in 1984.

Decades of waiting for help weren't enough. After McGraw learned about corrective surgery in April, she had to wait another five months for new insurance coverage to kick in.

A stapedectomy alone can cost around $4,000, and McGraw had no money to pay all the deductibles under regular Medicare coverage.

On Sept. 8, the morning after "painless" surgery at St. Therese Medical Center in Waukegan, McGraw was in a new world.

"Some girl came into my room and said, "Would you like some water?'" she recalled. "I said, "Yes! Yes! I can hear you! Say it again, say it again!' I rang for the nurse and told her to say something to me, too, so I could see how good I could hear."

At first, it was too well. The first time I went into a store, I ran out crying because it was so loud," McGraw said. There were voices over the loud speakers and cash registers and babies crying and people yelling. It was just unreal. Even at Christmas time, it was never like that for me.'

Almost comically, she now struggles to stop long-time acquaintances from shouting at her. And she has yet to break herself of the habit of wearing special headsets around the house.

A prisoner's release

Betty's son Mike said he and his siblings became accustomed to their mother's handicap. They couldn't be happier for her now.

"She's been a prisoner her whole life without hearing things unless somebody was screaming right in her face," Mike McGraw said.

What hurt the most, Betty said, was not hearing her children's school performances and graduation ceremonies, despite front row seats.

"I missed all their school plays," she said, choking up for the first time. "I had a daughter graduate from Concordia College with a master's degree and she got all these nice awards, and I didn't hear a thing. That was devastating.

"They could have done something long ago for this. All the things in my life I missed ... that's what hurts."

But happy days are here, and that is her focus. Her children are exposing her to new sounds all the time, such as The Nutcracker ice skating show in December.

McGraw can't say what she wants to hear because she has no points of reference. She seems happy discovering something new every day.

And Betty McGraw wants others to know there is always reason for hope. After 61 years, she is free from her personal prison. "I've been deaf all my life, and Dr. Gatti performed this miracle," she said. "I'd like people to know to never give up. You can always do better. All my life doctors told me there was nothing better."

She now knows better than that. She heard it herself.

      Reprinted from The News-Sun, Today's Living Section, November 23, 1995

     E.N.T. Consultants of Lake County, Ltd.
     William M. Gatti, M.D.
      755 S. Milwaukee Avenue, Suite #181
     Libertyville, IL  60048
     (847) 816-1228