At two years of age, MBU alum Amanda Ortmann, ‘02, battled meningitis. The infection left her with severe and profound hearing loss and her parents with a monumental decision to make: either raise their daughter within a deaf culture of sign language and deaf schools or attempt to immerse her into a world full of sound.

 They chose the latter. And, more than a quarter-century later, she’s glad they did.
 

Amanda Ortmann didn’t get to go to art class when she was in elementary school.

“When my class went to art, I went to speech therapy. And I am still a little bit bitter about that,” joked Ortmann, now 28, one day this past August. “As a kid, I was constantly going to the hospital, to speech therapy, to see my audiologist.”

Ortmann’s childhood was filled with appointments aimed at helping her adjust to a world that largely didn’t care about the fact that she was deaf. Without her hearing aid, Ortmann can make out roughly four percent of a 50-word conversation, she said. With it, along with visual cues and years of therapy, it’s hard to notice that she has a hearing impairment at all.

It hasn’t always been that way.

Her parents made a decision early on to forego exposing their daughter to sign language or, for that matter, deaf culture all together. It was a bold move, a move that people within the deaf community outright denounce. Instead, her parents opted to focus on providing resources to their daughter—from hearing aids to intensive speech therapy—that would allow her to better communicate with the rest of the world. “Everyone in life is confronted with tough choices. My parents had a really tough one to make: How do you raise this child?” Ortmann said. “They decided to choose the oral world.”

And although that decision meant no art class for a little girl who longed to be like the rest, it has also provided Ortmann the fuel for a lifelong journey—both personally and professionally—aimed at better understanding the wonder of the human auditory system.

“It definitely set a path for me,” she said. “Although the perception of speech and language seems to be an effortless task for individuals with normal hearing, it is such a testimony to the intricacy of God’s ingenious creation.”

Since graduating from MBU with a bachelor of science in communication and math, Ortmann has attained a master of science in speech and hearing science, with an emphasis in audiology, from Washington University. She’s currently working on her doctorate in audiology at the University of Pittsburgh and is expected to defend her dissertation, which focuses on speech perception and hearing rehabilitation, next spring.

All the while, Ortmann, a licensed audiologist, has been working with patients who, like her, desire to better hear the sounds of this world. Currently, she’s working at the Veteran’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, splitting her work time between seeing patients and working on research projects.
“There is so much evidence that noise from wartime induces trauma,” Ortmann explained. “During the Korean and Vietnam wars, soldiers didn’t wear hearing protection at all. So, now they’re feeling the effects.”

The war in Iraq is believed to be the loudest in history. In fact, Ortmann has already begun seeing patients who suffered hearing trauma from that war.

During her days spent at Washington University, Ortmann worked at Central Institute for the Deaf working with both children and adults with hearing impairments, providing them hearing aids and other amplification devices. She also served as an intern at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital’s Cochlear Implant Program helping children with profound hearing impairment hear through the use of an implanted electronic device called a a cochlear implant—an electronic device that has the potential to provide sound to people who are deaf.

Ultimately, she’d like to continue researching the auditory system and obtaining grants, perhaps while teaching courses. But she’d also like to continue working with patients.
Regardless of what she does next, though, she has no doubt the path her parents chose for her was the right one.

“I am not knocking the deaf community, but for me, it wasn’t the best choice,” she said. “The position that I am in today allows me to communicate with so many more people, not just the island of people who I would be able to interact with if I signed.”

And despite a natural inclination to feel vulnerable with such a disability, Ortmann came to the realization years ago that, regardless of her hearing impairment, there’s one voice that will never be deafened.

“Right before I graduated from high school, I had a stunning realization: Just because I have to work so hard to hear sound doesn’t mean I can’t hear God’s voice and have a quiet confidence of knowing that everything is going to be okay.”