Now 'hear' this

April 14, 2008 03:20 pm

— Click here to see the April 12, 2008 Neighbors section in its entirety

Now hear this
By Bobbie Poynter / Community Editor
“The Bionic Woman,” starring Lindsey Wagner, was a popular TV series in the 1970s about a woman who had major limbs replaced with bionic parts, making her stronger and faster. It was all about what might be or perhaps could be.
“The Bionic Woman” was fun.
It was entertaining.
It was futuristic.
But, “The Bionic Woman” was, in fact, fiction.
The fiction of the 1970s has now become the fact of the new century.
And Paula Farmer can now consider herself a true bionic woman.
The Rev. Paula Farmer, 55, of Corbin, has been the pastor of the New Hope Church of God in Corbin for nearly five years. Until January 2008, Farmer could hardly hear herself speak, much less hear the beautiful music performed by her church’s band and choir.
At the age of 29, Farmer was diagnosed with nerve deafness, which, over the next several years, caused her hearing to deteriorate, at an even quicker rate during traumatic and stressful periods in her life. Her type of hearing loss is hereditary, as her mother began losing her hearing at age 30 and her brother began losing his at age 14. Only eleven years ago, Paula Farmer herself was diagnosed with nerve deafness and tinnitus. In other words, she had profound deafness in her right ear.
Farmer’s hearing became so bad that she felt embarrassed in public trying to evangelize to people, as she constantly had to ask people to repeat themselves.
“I was the evangelist,” said Farmer, “and yet whenever someone tried to ask me a question, I simply couldn’t answer them. I had to teach myself to lip-read. It was the only way I got through the later years. It was just so frustrating. I thought, ‘how can I tell them that God will heal them when he wouldn’t heal me?’ That was a very hard struggle.”
Farmer’s family did what they could to ease her discomfort.
Her husband told her he was willing to do whatever was needed to get her hearing improved. He knew how important her ministry was to her.
“He just never learned how to deal with someone who could not hear him,” she said. “When he was with me, he would try to help by answering people’s questions himself. It was wonderful of him, but it simply was not always what I wanted to say.”
Farmer’s son, Shannon, now 35, empathized with his mother’s disability, so he simply refrained from saying too much in her presence. However, her daughter Angel, now 28, really became her mother’s ears.
“Angel would stay close by my side during a conversation, then turn and tell me the whole conversation. She made light of the situation; she never made it feel like a burden or an embarrassment. Best of all, she would never answer for me, she would always let me answer for myself.
“My family has been simply wonderful,” she added. “They would have fought a bear if need be.”
Paula Farmer prayed long and often about her problem. One day her husband reminded her that God helps those who help themselves, and she finally decided it was time to get a hearing aid.
“That did it. I couldn’t help it, I just broke,” she said. “I told God I loved the ministry better than I love my pride, so I decided it was time to get a hearing aid.”
Farmer went through seven hearing aids over the next several years, including a Miracle Ear. Even the Miracle Ear did not work for her, and after re-programming it five times, Farmer gave up and took it back.
In fact, her hearing aids actually seemed to add to her troubles rather than help.
“Even with a hearing aid, you may hear only three words in a conversation,” she said. “It was like putting together a puzzle with most of the pieces missing.”
Mike Breeding, treasurer at New Hope Church of God, has known Paula Farmer since she first began losing her hearing.
“Those of us that knew Paula well knew that we had to over-enunciate our speaking if we were to get her to understand. It was so much harder for someone who didn’t know her so well because they would turn their heads in the middle of a conversation or speak too fast. We all did our best to help her out, but you could see the frustration was taking its toll on her.”
Unbeknownst to the evangelist, Farmer would have her hearing aid turned up so loud at times that it would whistle as she moved or even opened her mouth. Of course, she was completely unaware of the problem, as she could not hear the high-pitched noise.
During one particular sermon, the congregation all seemed to turn as one toward the back of the sanctuary, thinking there was something wrong with the sound system. Farmer’s daughter finally caught her mother’s eye and made her understand it was her hearing aid whistling through the microphone.
Mike Breeding, the church treasure, laughed it off after the service.
“Paula,” he said, “you are the only preacher I know who can preach and whistle at the same time.”
That did it. Paula Farmer was desperate.
In the summer of 2007, Farmer accompanied her granddaughter to the University of Kentucky Medical Center to have a hearing test. As she sat in the waiting room, Farmer picked up a pamphlet on cochlear implants. The woman had already been told 14 years ago by a specialist in Memphis, Tenn. that she was not a good candidate for the procedure since it was only for people who were born deaf.
That was then, she thought. Maybe it was time to try again. After all, she had nothing left to lose.
Farmer made an appointment with an audiologist at UK Medical Center, at which time she was diagnosed with profound deafness in the right ear.
“During my first consultation with Paula, she sat on the edge of her chair with her elbows up on my desk and leaned in as close as she could,” said Meg Adkins, clinical audiologist at UK Medical Center. “Fifteen years ago Paula would never have been considered a candidate for a cochlear implant. Implants at that time were much newer, and long-term research had not been done. Only a candidate who had virtually no functional hearing would have been considered because, after the surgery, whatever hearing they may have had would have been lost.
“Paula made for a better candidate this time because the guidelines are simply not as stringent now as they were then. But even more important, her hearing loss is much worse than it was 15 years ago.”
After a barrage of consultations and interviews, Farmer was given an appointment for the procedure on Jan. 15, 2008, at UK Medical Center. The surgeon assured Farmer of his confidence in the surgical outcome, since he had already performed 230 of the procedures with excellent results.
“You could put black glasses (to block her lip-reading) on Paula prior to the implant and talk to her,” said Adkins. “If you said 20 words, she might be able to eek out two. Today she’d be knocking down ten or more. To you and me that may not be much, but add in her vision, which she has honed over the last decade, and she should have no trouble carrying on a whole conversation, jokes and all.”
Today, Paula Farmer sits back and relaxes as she carries on normal conversations. The implant attached to the right side of her head is covered by her hair and is not even noticeable to the casual observer. The improvement to Farmer’s ‘hearing’ has so vastly improved that the frustrating memories of the last 10 years are quickly fading.
“There is absolutely no comparison between now and then,” said Mike Breeding. There was a time when you would call Paula on the phone to ask her something, and you’d repeat yourself over and over again, trying to find a way to get her to understand. Finally, you’d just give up and say, (Never mind, I’ll e-mail you.)
“Now we can talk through the speaker phone and carry on a whole conversation. Sometimes I still have to repeat myself a couple of times, except now I just attribute it to the fact that there’s a lot of noise in the background. Can’t blame it on Paula’s hearing anymore.”
Was it worth it?
“If I had known then what I know now, I would have gone straight for the implant and have never spent another minute looking back,” said Farmer. “My husband was right to remind me that God helps those who help themselves.
“I’m free once again to live a normal life and go back to doing what I love to do. Except this time, it’s without the stress and strain of a blatant handicap.
“I guess this makes me a real bionic woman.”

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