Hearing Loss and Cancer

I grew up hard of hearing when there was no Americans With Disabilities Act. I was slapped around by teachers for not listening. I didn’t have any support in the schools. When I applied for jobs, I was asked things like “Why do you think you could be a librarian?” I wrote a book recently called Memoirs Of My Journey, which contains stories from deaf and hard-of-hearing people.

People look at me now on this great medication and think everything is great. They don’t realize how depressing it was for me to lose so much more of my hearing. I avoid large crowds. I wouldn’t go back to a reunion because it’s too noisy and I can’t hear. I lost over a dozen teeth and must wear implants just to chew. 

In my first book, I wrote about how I had heard of hearing-ear service dogs but didn’t need one. Others needed the dogs more than me. One day, a friend of mine was robbed and severely beaten. He didn’t hear the robber’s commands for his car keys. My mother was still alive at the time and had been encouraging me to get a hearing-ear dog for years. After this incident, she pushed even more. 

I got in touch with a woman who trained therapy dogs at my Cancer Center. She got me in touch with Circle Tail. All of their dogs are trained in a local prison program and by foster parents. In their testimonies, they don’t call their employees “Prisoners” but “Handlers.” Each handler speaks about the dogs they’ve trained in mini-profiles. There’s a picture of a cute little yellow lab, and the handler said, “I hope whoever gets this dog loves her as much as I do.”

I thought I was going to train this dog. The dog trained me. I received nothing but patience, love, and kindness. I was in tears. When I went down to Circle Tail, and they put Sita’s leash in my hand, we bonded immediately. I didn’t even know this was the same dog the handler was talking about until three months later. I couldn’t directly contact him, but I wanted to get him my books about my experience with her so that he could know how truly loved she was.

I had Sita for 14 years; she lived to be 17 years old.

We flew all over the country. She saw me through my cancer diagnosis, the death of my mother, and many other tough things. At one point, I was scared that I would have to give her up. She started getting overprotective and growling at other dogs who approached me. The trainer helped me through this, saying she was reading my emotions. If I were calm, she would be too. And it worked. When I took her to the hospital, they had treats for her there. They loved her. When it came time for me to get shots, the staff would take her out of the room and then bring her back to comfort me afterward. 

I lost Sita about the same time as the doctors told me that I needed a bone marrow transplant. Things were a bit intense. I’ve told church members that the only thing keeping me going was my faith. If I hadn’t had that, I probably would’ve gone to bed and not gotten up. I wouldn’t have taken my own life, but I wouldn’t have helped myself heal from the cancer either. I wouldn’t have cared about what food I put into my body, never gone anywhere, and just crawled into a little ball. Hope and faith, to me, are in many ways the same. They both keep us going and if we lose that, we’ve lost everything.

The people at Circle Tail did not have another dog for me, but Sita’s foster mom had a Jack Russell mix available. The dog was in the program but was eliminated because her leg gave way. She told me, “I think of that story of the robber attacking your friend. I want to loan her to you.” That was two years ago. I figured out that she was never a loan. They wanted me to keep her.

I was 17 years younger when I had Sita. The people at Circle Tail told me not to get another lab. I’m older; I’m in an apartment instead of a townhouse. I needed to find a little dog, and this Jack Russell mix was perfect. She alerts me in the house for the microwave, the Keurig, and any other audio cues. I take her to coffee shops and different places. Davina is my hearing ear dog now, and I love her.

Read Dr. Jane's book about her journey with hearing loss and cancer.

Photo courtesy of author. Davina is the white dog featured on the left and the book cover. Sita is the tan dog featured on the right.