Jim Soderborg
“Sometimes people just don't realize that there's hope.”
Photo: Laura Dickinson
For most of his life, Jim Soderborg had no hearing at all in his left ear due to scarring from multiple mastoidectomy operations. Later on, the hearing in his right ear started to go.
He got a hearing aid for his right ear a few years ago when he was living in the Bay Area with help from his local Lions Club.
Then he moved to Paradise. Yes, that Paradise — the town that burned. While he was living there, he lost the hearing aid. And then he lost his home.
He moved in with a friend in Morro Bay, and he was without a hearing aid for about a year and a half. He couldn’t afford to replace it.
“It was very hard,” Jim says. “I could function but it was very difficult. I had to read lips and have the person looking right at me.”
Finally Jim went to the Morro Bay Lions Club for help, and they referred him to LSH. LSH sent him to the Morro Bay Hearing Aid Center, and he walked in just hoping to get another device for his right ear. But audiologist Gretchen Daulman wasn’t satisfied with that. She believed she could also help with his left ear.
“I was only applying for one ear,” he told us. He left with two hearing aids — and the ability to hear with an ear that had been totally deaf for most of his life.
“You get used to not hearing,” Jim observes, “and you forget there’s noise out there.
“It’s a miracle. Now I can hear better than everybody else.”
Jim is hoping more people will become aware of the good LSH can do.
“Sometimes people just don’t realize that there’s hope. I’m so grateful to you guys for changing my life.”
