A young Proserpine school girl - named after her parents’ love for the ocean - can now hear the whisper of the waves when she sits at Cannonvale Beach. Eleven-year-old Searna Casos (pictured) was born profoundly deaf in one ear, and has all her life been struggling to hear the sounds most of us take for granted.
“I have always been turning my head to hear what people are saying. I couldn’t hear things like people whispering. Background stuff has always been hard to hear,” said the unassuming, pretty girl who dreams of becoming a fashion designer.
Searna’s mum May says her daughter was born with left microtia, or small ear, something that affects about one in every 20,000 children.
“Nobody knows why some kids are born with it,” May says. “It makes it really hard for children to listen in school, because they have to concentrate so hard just to hear what the teachers are saying,” she said.
“I suppose Searna is lucky in a way, because some kids are born with bilateral microtia which means they cannot hear a thing,” she said.
Late last year, the Casos family learned of a profound medical improvement in hearing aids which led them to Brisbane and to a specialist at the Hear and Say Centre that would introduce them to a piece of technology that would change Searna’s life forever.
The Proserpine State School student is one of four people in Australia to sport a tiny device smaller than a 20c piece called The Vibrant Soundbridge. Not that you would know it’s there.
“In the past I have worn a big headband-type thing that helps me hear, but this just clips in and it comes in four colours to blend in with your hair colour,” she said.
May says the breakthrough hearing aid technology works like a microphone. It picks up sounds and transmits them to its external component which is inserted behind the ear.
“Everyone has three bones and they vibrate to give you sound. This device is hooked on to one of the bones and vibrates it,” May said.
Searna says it’s made the world of difference.
“I don’t have to turn my head all the time when people talk, which takes a while to get used to. I can hear people whisper now, which is funny, and the TV isn’t as loud. Sometimes I tell people shhhhhh, which mum finds funny,” she said.
This month, until April 26, is the Hear and Say Centre’s Butterfly Appeal which calls for support from communities to give deaf children the lifelong gifts of sound and speech.
The significance of the butterfly that they too are deaf … and when they learn to hear, listen and speak they emerge like butterflies from the cocoon of silence, the appeal says.
Searna and May will be outside Woolworths in Proserpine this Saturday, April 14 and the following Saturday selling special merchandise including beautiful brooches, mini bling biros, charm bracelets and wristbands.
“But more importantly we want to show people who might know someone who is deaf that there is a device that can help. We want to share our good fortune with everyone,” May said.
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