Deaf girl finds kindness in her search for missing hearing device

Friday 12 January 2018

They say ‘actions speak louder than words’ - and that's certainly true for one girl, despite being deaf, who has been overwhelmed by the flood of kindness she received after losing a vital device that helps her hearing.

Ella O’Connor (19) has had the Bluetooth device which connects her phone and iPad to her cochlear implant since February 2016, and says it’s made a huge difference.

“Before I had it, I would put music on really loud, but even then I would only hear vibrations. This enabled me to hear music really clear, I could even hear the words... Whenever I got a phone call, I would automatically have it streamed into my ears. It’s made a huge difference and it’s very important to me, it’s part of my life.”

While she was without the device, Ella had to listen very hard to hear phone calls making her very tired. She described it as “a million times more difficult.”

Pictured: Ella says phone calls can be especially difficult without the device, which streams calls directly into her ear.

She was given the device by St Thomas’ Hospital in London, where she has been receiving treatment for her hearing since she was 18 months old. The teen was desperate to recover the item before she returned for another appointment at the hospital in a couple of weeks' time.

Ella had been without her cochlear helper since Friday 5 January - more than a week. “I keep it in my back pocket in my jeans and I realised that I couldn’t feel it. I had been to town, St Peters garden centre and the DHL (cargo) centre at the airport.

“…I’ve been back to DHL twice looking for it in the carpark, under all the cars but I just can’t find it. I’ve left my details at the centre but I haven’t heard from them.”

Ella and Jersey Police shared the missing item on various social media pages, asking for islanders' help to locate it. But it wasn’t just their searching efforts many offered - a number even said they would pay towards a new device, leaving Ella “really emotional” when she read through the comments.

Pictured: The Police appealed over social media to help Ella find her important hearing helper.

“I just started crying, I was just so shocked as I wasn’t expecting to see that because I had a really hard time in school because of my deafness. I’ve even heard adults say ‘I don’t want to work with her,’ I have hearing problems that’s all it is, it’s not something you can catch off me.”

Ella was reunited with the Bluetooth device yesterday, but it‘s not the only thing that she found through this search. The kindness she received has in Ella’s words, “made my day.”