By LORI TUCKER
6 News Anchor/Reporter
MARYVILLE (WATE) - A non-profit Maryville facility that helps the hearing impaired through an innovative program is expanding so it can help even more people.
"From the time of getting my aids I remember being frightened by the first sounds I could hear," said Mandy Burnside.
She was fitted with her first pair of hearing aids at age three at the Hearing and Speech Foundation.
"Nobody would believe me that I had hearing loss because I spoke so well," Mandy said.
It wasn't the hearing aids or speech therapy alone that helped Mandy speak so clearly and function in a regular school. It was also the amazing approach at the foundation to her hearing loss.
"This program here is unique in that it is going to work directly with finding the maximum potential and develop that for pure auditory perception and speech," said foundation CEO and co-founder John Berry.
The process begins in a special room called an anachoic chamber. It's designed to eliminate 99% of all noise from outside and in, and it may be a catalyst in getting believers of more traditional auditory therapy to take notice.
"Because a lot of its principals aren't accepted is why I built the room, to start measuring it and start getting people to believe these principals are true," Berry said.
The frequency levels Mandy is able to pick up without hearing aids are measured.
Even at a very low frequency, Mandy's brain has been trained to dial in and decode speech information through what little hearing she has.
Berry started the foundation in 1981 after studying the unique form of auditory training in Croatia.
Since then, thousands of people like Mandy have been given the life-changing gift of sound.
"It's unheard of for anybody with a hearing impairment to work with a phone and I've worked jobs where I worked in a call center!" Mandy said.
The foundation purchased a facility across the street on Broadway Avenue to become a training center that's a one of a kind in the U.S. It's planned to open in January.
"Nobody would believe me that I had hearing loss because I spoke so well," Mandy Burnside said.
