Please Help Give My Daughter the Chance To Hear!

[leostolove]

My daughter, Brooke, who is now two years old, is deaf. She was born with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, which means that has damage to both of her inner ears. I have spent a lot of money over several months going to audiologists, speech therapists, geneticists, radiologists, psychologists, cardiologists (apparently, there is some connection between that type of hearing loss and the cardiovascular system!), and of course pediatricians. She has been wearing hearing aids since she was three months old, but because she has severely profound hearing loss, they are not effective. In fact, the reason why she is wearing them is because it is one of the conditions that we must meet in order to be a candidate for a very expensive surgery called cochlear implantation. This procedure will allow for her to hear. In a nutshell, a device that is implanted in her skull will send signals to her inner ear that will be converted by her brain as sounds. However, to be a candidate for this surgery, there are several things that must be done first, one of which includes wearing hearing aids. Now that she has completed all of the steps, she is now a candidate for the surgery. However, she is unable to move forward with the surgery because the cost is so much – for one implant, it is $50,000 without insurance, so it will be at least $100,000 to get them implanted on both ears. My insurance does not cover this surgery at all (the insurance company wrote that this is an elective surgery and that hearing aids will suffice – which I explained is not true since she cannot hear even with the hearing aids), and I do not have the funds to pay for this upfront nor do I make enough to pay this amount off monthly. The money that I have spent on this process alone has eaten up my savings. I have been turned down at several banks and banking websites for loans because of a low credit score (mostly driven by both my large student loan debt as well as maxing out my credit cards for these medical appointments – which impacts credit utilization, a major aspect of one’s credit score). I could really use the compassion of anyone who has any excess funds to share – I know that it may be a tall ask since COVID-19 has impacted a lot of people. I hope that you can help. I would like for my daughter to hear all the things that we take for granted: the birds chirping in the morning, the dishwasher running, her father’s off-tune voice singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Thank you for your time in reading this message.

paypal.me/antwanjonesphd