BALTIMORE (Map, News) - As a toddler, Bridget Niedermeyer would ignore her parents when they called her for dinner.

Not until she turned 4 did they realize it wasn’t an overactive imagination or defiance that prevented her from listening. She couldn’t hear them.

“My twin sister would always hit me on the arm to get my attention,” says Niedermeyer, 22, a senior audiology major at Towson University.

Now, thanks to a high-tech hearing aid and a cochlear implant, she’s among a growing number of deaf people entering audiology to help others deal with hearing loss.

“I am an audiologist with hearing loss, and there are numerous more across the country and world,” said Samuel Atcherson, president of the Association of Medical Professionals with Hearing Losses.

Niedermeyer, an Idlewylde resident, used to come home exhausted after straining to fill in the gaps her hearing aid missed. Quick with disarming grins, she never lets her hearing impairment consume her — even when she misses the jokes friends tell in noisy cafeterias. Or when classmates ask why the teacher wears a microphone. Or when she struggles to read lips in dark restaurants.

Before she could earn an advanced degree and help others with hearing loss, she knew she needed the cochlear implant surgery.

“I want to help my patients get the best hearing possible and show them that I understand where they are coming from,” Niedermeyer said with a clarity of pronunciation that impresses her doctors at Greater Baltimore Medical Center.

Two years after she got the implant, she’s still adjusting to it. The electronic device enables her to hear by stimulating auditory nerves with electrical impulses, and, she says, it has given her the ability to pursue her dream. About 100,000 people worldwide have cochlear implants, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

Adjusting to them takes many patients grueling months. Patients often complain of hearing robotic voices because the sounds are generated electronically and say they have to learn how to differentiate between sounds before hearing words.

“It’s not like getting glasses,” said Regina Presley, senior cochlear implant audiologist at GBMC.

“The process takes tremendous commitment. For Bridget, that dedication has paid off.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com

Comments from Examiner Readers

9:12 PM MST on Wed., Jan. 30, 2008 re: "Deaf TU student hopes to help hearing impaired"

The Undertaker said:
I have a friend who has a deaf cat. I wonder if the beast could be helped by this.

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6:14 AM MST on Wed., Jan. 30, 2008 re: "Deaf TU student hopes to help hearing impaired"

Examiner Reader said:
Did she learn ASL?

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