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Tamzin Stockdale began to lose her hearing when she was only four years old. Tamzin, now eight years old, woke up one morning shouting, “Mum, my ears have popped.”
Mother, Kelley, rushed to her daughter, who explained that it sounded like she was underwater. When Kelley asked Tamzin if she could hear, Tamzin replied that she could. But Kelley “could tell [Tamzin] was just looking at [her] lips.”
Kelley took her daughter to see various doctors, in hopes of having her daughter’s condition diagnosed. But even with this new information, there was nothing doctors nor Kelley could do to keep Tamzin’s hearing from further deteriorating.
When Kelley was pregnant with her daughter, she’d inadvertently passed on the virus cytomegalovirus to Tamzin. After four years of developing in Tamzin’s body, it finally manifested – by taking Tamzin’s hearing.
The doctor could only say, “I’m sorry, but she’s deaf.”
But Kelley refused to stop fighting for her daughter. Six months later, she took Tamzin to get a cochlear implant that restored the hearing in her right ear – but effectively took away the hearing in her left.
About two and a half years later, the virus came back again, this time targeting Tamzin’s left ear, rendering her deaf once again.
It took another year before Tamzin’s doctors were able to find another potential solution: surgically implant a second cochlear implant in her other ear and finally restore her hearing for once and for all.
Earlier this month, doctors switched the new implant on – and Tamzin’s response is positively endearing. “I sound robotic,” she giggled.
“I'm so glad I can hear out of both ears now so my mum doesn't have to repeat herself all the time mom,” she added. “I can hear mum and my baby brother with both ears and it sounds amazing. I feel normal again but if I want to be deaf and not listen to my mum I can just take them out.”
Kelley is too grateful to be angered by her daughter’s playfulness. “It's a miracle for her being hearing for four years then suddenly going deaf,” she said. “She knew what she was missing and to get all that back 100% four years later is just the most amazing ending we could of wished for.”
Watch the sweet moment of Tamzin hearing for the first time here:
