Help Erika cover her hearing aid expenses!

Hi, I'm Rachel Hackett, and along with some other of Erika's friends, I am raising money to help Erika and her husband, Ian, cover the cost of the hearing aids that Erika recently learned she needs. Erika and I met through an informal mom's group in Frederick, MD. Last year, we did our best to support Erika and Ian as she learned about her ear condition and went through several surgeries. Now that she's through the surgeries, she has now learned she needs hearing aids.

Their insurance isn't covering the cost of them at all, because for some reason it's considered a "luxury cosmetic", even though her high frequency hearing is diagnosed as "severe". At our encouragement, Erika agreed to let us set this go fund me up.

We would love to cover the whole cost of the hearing aids, but they will be encouraged by any financial help we can give them towards this large, unexpected expense.

We plan to run this until we hit $5k in donations, or until the end of March.

Here is the more detailed story, written by Erika:

In 2023, pain from an ear infection that wouldn’t go away ended me at a specialty ENT. I went in on Monday and needed urgent surgery the following Wednesday. We found that both my ear drums were retracted and sitting on the bones of my middle ear. As a result, the incus bones in both ears were severely degraded, causing high frequency hearing issues. The retraction also enabled an abnormal growth of cells called a cholesteatoma. Surgical treatment was the only option as these growths can cause total hearing loss, brain fluid leaks and brain infections.

My cholesteatomas were large and wrapped around my facial nerves. Luckily, the growths were diffuse so they did not manage to reach my brain. We wouldn’t know this until 20 min before going into surgery so that week leading up to it was absolutely terrifying.

My first surgery in August resulted in cholesteatoma removal and a titanium implant being put in place of my incus bone for the left ear and eardrum reconstruction and a tube placed in my right ear. The tube in the right ear allowed us to buy some time until I could go under anesthesia again. Each surgery was four hours. I then had to have my right ear bones reconstructed in October. This surgery caused my high frequency hearing to drop from mild to severe making conversations very hard for me. Clarity has been considerably affected and hearing is difficult in both quiet and noisy environments.

I found myself checking out from conversations simply because I could not follow along or I felt annoying asking for people to repeat things constantly. Five months after my original diagnosis I got cleared to get hearing aids to help, but unfortunately these are considered a luxury cosmetic item.

The model that was recommended for my range of hearing loss costs $5,100 and should last five years. We were shocked at the cost. But after a trial of the hearing aids, we know it was worth it. I feel like I can finally engage more actively in social interactions. I can’t imagine not having them. The cholesteatomas were doing damage long before my doctor found them. I now know birds are loud, seat belts make a noise, so does your hair moving! Hearing well again is amazing.