LUBBOCK, Texas -- From an onlooker’s perspective, Anna Burch is like any other 5-year-old. She’s friendly, energized and quite interactive. But if you call her name, she won’t respond. She’s not being rude. She simply can’t hear you.Amy Burch is a single mother of three adopted girls Amelia, 8; Lucy, 3; and Anna, 5. Burch adopted Anna from Anyang, China, just a few weeks before her fifth birthday with the help of her parents. Debra Burch, Amy’s mother, said she and her husband Mike were with her daughter when she made the decision to adopt Anna. “We knew she was Deaf,” said Debra.
The disability didn’t hinder the family’s excitement to adopt her and figured Anna’s deafness could be treated with a hearing aid or cochlear implant. The extent of Anna’s condition was unknown until the family had her hearing assessed.
Anna was born with no cochleas, said Dr. Steven Zupancic, assistant professor of Speech-Language & Hearing Sciences at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Allied Health Sciences. The cochlea is what allows hearing, said Brittany Hall, clinical supervisor for SLHS at TTUHSC SAHS.
Anna was profoundly Deaf. Debra said cochlear implants and hearing aids would be of no use, so the family began looking into other options. She was taken to Hall for an assessment in August.
“Anna is such an amazing little girl,” Hall said. “She has no formal language of communication, but she is such a communicative little girl. … I saw her for an assessment in 2012. She was communicating, but it wasn’t through words. With the help of the family, she learned sign communication.”
Hall said before Anna’s departure to Verona, she was working to teach her Anna to pair signs with speech by reading lips... Read The Full Story.
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