The first doctor to whom parents brought Rita because of her delay in speech development just snapped his fingers near Rita’s ears and said she could hear. The doctor thought the girl was turning her head to the sound, while she was just watching his hand. The mother believed his assurances that the child’s hearing was all right. This way, 1.5 out the precious 3 years were lost, and that’s the time period when a deaf child’s parents urgently need to arrange cochlear implantation at any cost.
Photo: Vasily Shaposhnikov
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Girl Can’t Hear
// Rita Beloglazova needs nearly 1 million rubles for cochlear implantation
Rita is three. She has sensory-neural deafness of fourth degree. It means the girl hears almost nothing, even with two hearing devices. She will not learn to speak unless she gets special implants before the age of five. These implants are special devices whose invention made deafness curable, and muteness caused by deafness impossible. In nearest future, all children like Rita will be cured. Now, however, cochlear implantation is a high technology, with a several-years queue of patients. So, Rita risks staying one of the last deaf-mute people in the world.
In the evening, when it’s time to sleep, Rita takes off not only clothes, just like all other children, but also two hearing devices attached behind her ears. She sinks into absolute silence. Before falling asleep, the girl talks to herself for a long time, because she really likes and strongly wants talking. Although, she utters not words, like other children do, but babble. There are different intonations in that babble: she asks something, she boasts, she gets sad, angry, she scolds. Hearing devices strongly distort the sounds of human speech around her, and she clearly receives the intonation only. So, she learned to speak with intonations, but not words.
Rita knows just a few basic words, like ‘mama’, ‘papa’, ‘av-av’ (dog) and ‘um-um’ (to eat). At her endless lessons with audiologist and speech therapist, Rita is almost unable to learn letters, because her hearing devices distort sounds. She learns by memorizing entire words. Now she makes no mistakes when putting the card with ‘mama’ word next to a picture of a mother, and the ‘cow’ card next to a picture of a cow. She learns to pronounce words entirely, using the intonation scheme instead of the sounds which make up a word. It is hard work – to teach a deaf person to speak. The deaf child copies the intonation while the doctor diligently positions the child’s lips and tongue on the intonation curves. It’s hard to explain, isn’t it?
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For those who are encountering the Russian Aid Fund for the first time
The Russian Aid Fund was founded in 1996 to assistant the authors of desperate letters sent to Kommersant. We verify the letters with the help of local authorities, then publish the letters in Kommersant, Domovoi magazine and on the site www.rusfond.ru. If you decide to help, you will receive the banking details of the authors of the letters, and the rest is up to you. You just help you help. This approach has been popular with our readers. More than $8.4 million has been collected. We also organize relief efforts during national catastrophes, for 53 families of the miners who died in the Zyryanovskaya Mine in Kuzbass, 57 families of the policemen who burned to death in Samara, 153 families of the victims of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk, 118 families of the sailors who died on the submarine Kursk, 52 families of the hostages who died in the seizure of the performance of Nord Ost, 39 families of those who died in the Moscow Metro on February 6, 2004, 100 families who suffered losses in Beslan. The Fund is the winner of the Silver Archer award.
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Address: P.O. Box 50, 125252 Moscow, Russia
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Telephone: +7 (095) 943-9135
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For Rita, it means she will be sent to a deaf-and-mute asylum, 100 kilometers away from home, unless she undergoes cochlear implantation. On the contrary, if she does undergo it, she’ll be able to go to a normal school.
Rita likes to learn. She puts around herself the flashcards with pictures, and I can see she is well familiar with a hare, a cat, a dog, a cow, and a goat. She also knows what these animals eat. Moreover, Rita can imitate the animals’ voices. To imitate barking, it is enough to hear its intonation. To master human speech, intonation is not enough.
Rita’s mother said the deafness must be due to antibiotics which were injected into the girl’s system when she was just born. The mother said the first otolaryngologist they came to see because of the girl’s delay in speech development just snapped his fingers near Rita’s ears and said she could hear. The doctor thought the girl was turning her head to the sound, while she was just watching his hand. The mother believed his assurances that the child’s hearing was all right. This way, 1.5 out the precious 3 years were lost, but that’s the time period when a deaf child’s parents urgently need to arrange cochlear implantation at any cost.
Rita’s mother is talking, while Rita and I communicate somehow. I somehow understood from Rita’s indistinct babble that she chose a tangerine and an apple, out of all kinds of fruit in a café where we sit. Somehow, I figured out that she chose a red apple, and not a green one. Anyway, when I buy the tangerine and the apple for Rita, her babble becomes of a satisfied and grateful intonation.
Or, perhaps, Rita simply likes playing the game of make-believe that she as if says something and that I as if understand her.
“Balalalalalalalalalala,” says Rita.
“Sure, I’ll peel the tangerine for you,” replies Rita’s mother. “Here you are.”
Genuine delight lights up in the girl’s eyes: she is happy that she has talked to us so well, and that we understood her so well.
Rita’s mother says her daughter plays that game all the time. She always babbles something in different intonations. When the adults feed her, dress her, put her shoes on, and take her outdoors, she is very happy, as if that’s precisely what she wanted to do.
“But there is something else…When we take her hearing devices off for the night, she keeps lying in bed for a long time, without sleep, and babbles absolutely soundlessly. My heart aches to see it,” says the mother.
Rita knows no difference between silence and sound. We who can hear simply can’t understand what it’s like. Rita will acquire hearing if she undergoes cochlear implantation. If not, it will take her years of hard labor to learn to distinguish between silence and sound by means of her larynx.
&735,200 Rubles Needed to Save 3-year-old Rita Beloglazova
“Rita is almost completely deaf, but precisely now she has very good chances to acquire hearing and speech with the help of cochlear implantation,” said Natalia Eretnova, developmental pediatrician of Voronezh’s Regional Children’s Hospital. Once a week, Rita’s parents bring her to Voronezh to attend speech lessons. Doctors say her acoustic prospects are excellent. If the surgery is carried out timely, “Rita will surely learn to speak and will go to a normal school,” believes Dr. Eretnova.
“Rita is in the age suitable for the surgery. She is just three, and the younger a child, the better are chances that cochlear implantation will make it possible for the child to acquire speech. The girl is very talented, her parents care greatly about her speech development, so I think everything will be well. Such children usually master oral speech in three years,” believes Marina Goihburg, research associate of the Russian Research & Practice Center for Audiology and Hearing Aid.
The Russian state will pay for the surgery, but a C124RE implant and a processor cost 980,000 rubles. As always, our permanent partner Kapital Investment Group donates $10,000. So, Rita needs 735,200 rubles more.
Dear friends! Certainly, one can live without hearing and talking. Yet, what sort of life is that? That is why our fund regards curing Rita from deafness and muteness as a life-saving treatment. Please, do not be distracted by the cost of saving Rita – any aid will be accepted gratefully. Donations can be transferred to the implant supplier’s account or to Rita’s mother Lilia Beloglazova’s account in Moscow Sberbank. The fund has all banking details.
Expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Valery Panyushkin, specially for the Russian Aid Fund
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 01, 2008
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