Defying her Diagnosis: Ceramics and Jewelry teacher Jennifer Hensley woke up with a hearing impairment eight years ago, causing her to change her teaching and communicating methods

EEEEEEEEEEEEK. 

Ceramics and Jewelry Sculpture teacher Jennifer Hensley woke up startled by a high-pitched ringing in her right ear. What’s going on? She couldn’t hear any other noise. She’d lost any sense of balance, stumbling from her bedroom to the living room — walking straight into the wall. 

Something was wrong. 

She drove to her primary doctor, thinking her ears were just clogged — expecting an over-the-counter prescription of antibiotics and 10 days of recovery to get her back to normal. But this was far from her soon-to-be reality. 

Hensley was sent to an ENT doctor, where she underwent several doses of medication, examinations by countless doctors and an MRI scan. It was clear it was more than an ear infection. 

“I was scared, not knowing,” Hensley said. “It was like a waiting game.”

Three weeks later, she was diagnosed with Sudden Single Sided Deafness at age 35 — an irreversible condition. For the rest of her life, teaching art would look much different, and she’d have to spend months adjusting to her new reality and unlearning her perfected routine in the classroom after nine years of teaching. 

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Teaching is Henley’s passion. She’s loved 3-D art and photography since middle school, and found joy in sharing those interests with other students. When the diagnosis happened eight years ago, she was on maternity leave. But with a two month-recovery process of being injected with high doses of steroids, it was clear that her teaching career would need to be put on hold longer. 

Those two months of rehab were dark for Hensley — the drugs drained all her energy and left her bedridden and sleepless for days at a time, all while taking care of her two kids. Hensley knows that if she hadn’t looked at the positive side, she may not have gotten through it. 

“They had put me on such a high dose of steroids initially that I was so sick,” Hensley said. “To the point where it was hard to care for my children. I kept saying to myself, ‘You’re about done with steroids. At least you’re not going through chemo. At least I can still live to be there for my kids.’ Somehow, I found the strength to look at what I hadn’t lost and look at what battle I wasn’t fighting.”

Following her rehab, Hensley could make out very little noise on her right side, only able to hear  loud noises such as car horns and gunshots. Simple things like phone calls with her mom required work. And as a mother, she frequently wasn’t able to hear her children at grocery stores, parks or even in the car. In restaurants, it seemed like she wasn’t a part of her kids’ conversation —  being a mother often felt impossible. 

It was clear to Hensley that hearing students’ voices from her right ear was out of the question — she could barely hear her own family’s voices. However, she wasn’t willing to give up teaching. When a job opened at Shawnee Mission East for a Jewelry & Ceramics teacher — both involving 3-D art — Hensley took it. 

Teaching with a hearing impairment was a new barrier for Hensley. The loss of hearing in her right ear also meant the loss of her sense of direction for sound. She couldn’t tell where a student’s voice was coming from. She couldn’t hear any student talking into her right ear. She couldn’t read the lips of students making eye contact with her. It felt unbearable.

“It was exhausting,” Hensley said. “It’s almost like someone took the volume on all the background noise and turned it up and took the volume on the actual speech and turned it down. Your brain is having to work so hard to fill in the gaps. You’re always tired.”

But Hensley wasn’t discouraged — she adapted. At the beginning of each semester, she explained her hearing impairment to her students, urging them to make eye contact with her when speaking so she could read lips, raise their hand so she could tell where the sound was coming from and talk into her left ear rather than her right. It took them a few weeks to get the hang of, but Hensley feels lucky her students were able to pick it up quickly. 

“It’s rare, seeing someone go through that,” Senior Lily Lomshek, who’s had Hensley every year of high school, said. “But the fact that she is still able to teach and help students with her hearing impairment is awesome to see. It shows students that even if they are going through something, they can still get through it.” 

Slowly but surely, she got used to reading the lips of her students, to filling in the blanks between words she could read or hear. She could hold a conversation with anyone. Teaching with her hearing impairment felt normal.

Then the mask requirement was put in place. 

Lip reading? Gone. Loud voices? Muffled. All the communication strategies Hensley had grown used to weren’t possible anymore. She could no longer understand what students, family members or friends were trying to say to her — it seemed like she was back at square one. Hensley still remembers going to Subway and having to ask her children to interpret the mask-wearing employee for her. She felt helpless.

“It made life pretty much impossible,” Hensley said. 

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Two months into the pandemic, Hensley decided she couldn’t take it anymore. 

She scheduled a surgery for a Cochlear implant — an electronic device that stimulates the auditory nerve to regain hearing. She’d considered it for the past few years, but due to issues with FDA approval and no insurance coverage, she held off. The Prairie Village mask mandate was her final straw — she decided to take the leap. While there were risks of paralysis or fluid leakage in the surgery, it was worth it to lessen the frustration of communication that comes with everyday life.

Following the implant, Hensley went through six months of hearing therapy where she focused on word recognition solely in her right ear. At first, everything sounded distorted, but eventually she could hear voices in her right ear, although word recognition can still sometimes be a struggle. 

“It’s like running versus running into a crazy strong headwind,” Hensley said. “You’re still doing your best, you’re still working hard. But there isn’t something always pushing down on you. I can simply function at the same level.” 

Now, she feels like she can finally focus on teaching rather than figuring out what students are saying. Hensley no longer has to constantly ask students to speak louder or tell them to raise their hand when asking a question — she can just answer it. She can hear students even with their masks on. She can hear her children talking in the car. It’s like she can breathe again. 

She feels like she can once again teach and interact in the way she used to before her hearing impairment. 

“I feel free,” Hensley said.