Surgery Helps Restore Woman's Hearing

The Daily Herald, Arlington Heights, Illinois
November 6, 1994

By C.L. Waller
Daily Herald Staff Writer

And she still favors her left ear when talking on the telephone.

That's because the 25-year-old has spent most of her life being nearly deaf in her right ear.

She learned early on as a child to compensate for the hearing loss by reading people's lips and by depending on her left ear.

All through school in Oklahoma, Beckes was shy because she did not want to be involved in conversations and she had difficulty speaking in front of others with any confidence in her words.

Since her ear implant was completed, ChrisTee Beckes can now sit near the lake behind her Wildwood residence and listen to the sounds of nature she could not hear before. (Daily Herald Photo/Mark Black)

While she was considered personable, as a student she was classified a slow learner.

Once on her own, she had to shop for the loudest alarm clock she could find because sleeping on her good ear meant silencing any surrounding sounds.

But through a new middle ear implant operation performed at Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, 90 percent of the hearing in her right ear has been restored.

"Now I can hear people without even seeing them. Now I can use the phone with my right ear," said Beckes, a resident of incorporated Wildwood in Lake County.

A near disaster prompted her to seek help. While crossing a parking lot after lunch her good ear was closest to her friends who were talking.

She did not hear a car coming up on her right side and was nearly struck by the vehicle. A friend yelled for her to look out.

"We got in the car and I said 'I've got to do something about this,'" said Beckes, who at that time lived a couple of blocks away from Condell.

The implant required surgery, which was nothing new for Beckes.

As a child she first had tubes put in her ears and her adenoids removed and a second surgery followed to repair a hole in her left ear drum with a laser.

A third surgery was performed with lasers on her right ear, but without much success.

Then in 1985 doctors removed a cyst from the right middle ear. In 1985, the practice was to follow that surgery with hearing reconstruction, once it was determined that the cyst had not recurred and that the ear was ready for reconstruction.

"After the surgery, my mother called the hospital and the doctor said there was nothing more they could do," Beckes said.

Following the incident with the car, Beckes went into Dr. William Gatti's office in Libertyville to consider the type of hearing aid she could purchase.

The doctor, who is also on staff at Condell Medical Center, said an audiogram he conducted on Beckes indicated loss of hearing in her right middle ear of the conductive type, which is potentially correctable.

The audiogram also showed she had a 70 percent hearing loss in her right ear.

Just a year ago a new middle ear implant had been developed for the specific type of defect Beckes had.

"The new implant is made of a material called hydroxylapatite, a bioceramic material used for years in plastic and orthopedic surgery as well as in ear surgery. It is unique because it assumes bone-like characteristics and permanently bonds tissue together," Gatti said.

In Beckes' case, the joint-like prosthesis connects the second and third bones of the middle ear, called the incus and stapes bones. The bone had deteriorated because of her chronic middle ear infections over the years.

The connection allows sound to travel from her eardrum to the malleus bone to the incus and stapes bones into the inner ear. "It (the connector) becomes part of her," Gatti said.

The doctor said it takes a specific problem, which includes chronic, recurring ear infections with hearing loss, for the implant to be used.

Beckes works in sales and production support at a plastic products manufacturer called Courtesy Corp. in Buffalo Grove, while seeking an associates degree at the College of Lake County in Grayslake.

Beckes wants to focus on studying physical therapy. Not only did her own experiences in classrooms with disabled students help her gain respect for those individuals, but she has watched her boyfriend of four years overcome paralysis from an aneurysm.