Caroline Lewis
“I thought I'd just have to live with it.”
Photo: Anne Fishbein
In her watercolor class at her local senior center, Caroline Lewis couldn’t hear the teacher’s instructions.
“The teacher would say, ‘I want you to make these three colors.’ I’d hear two, but I wouldn’t hear the other. I’d ask a neighbor, but you don’t want to keep asking the same question over and over again. People make you feel like you’re an idiot,” she remembers.
It wasn’t much better at home. “On the phone, or in conversations with my daughters, I always had to get them to repeat. They’d say, ‘Mother, you need hearing aids.’
Caroline already knew that. Two years ago, she had a hearing test, and it confirmed that she really needed the devices.
“I’d say, ‘Anybody’s got $3,000, hand it over.'”
That’s because Caroline’s health insurance would only pay a fraction of the cost. She applied for help from the county, and was denied. “I thought I’d just have to live with it,” she says.
But then, through the senior center, she got in touch with the Lakewood Lions Club, and they referred her to LSH.
“The county denied me,” Caroline says, “but you said it was OK.”
Now, with her new hearing aids, she gets a lot more out of her art class. “I can hear perfectly,” she says, “and I sit in the back row.”
“It makes a big difference. You have no idea how much I appreciate your help.”
