Lorraine is a Miracle-Ear customer who almost missed out on the love of her life because she couldn’t hear him.
Shy and soft-spoken, Dave didn’t know what to think when the pretty woman he knew from church stopped speaking to him. “I thought she was conceited or stuck up because she didn’t answer me. I didn’t know she couldn’t hear me.”
Meanwhile, Lorraine wondered why Dave no longer spoke to her. When she asked him what was wrong, she was surprised to learn he had never stopped speaking to her. “Then I told him my problem — I was totally deaf in my right ear.” Whereas Dave once sat on her left, he had moved to her right. “We kinda smoothed everything over,” she says. “We got married a month later.”
In the early days, Dave took care to speak on Lorraine’s good side, the side from which she could hear. As her other ear failed, Dave had to overcome his quiet nature to speak even louder. “I felt uncomfortable, because I felt like I would be yelling at her,” he says. “Other people would not know, and they would look at us and go, ‘Look at the way he speaks to her.’”
Now that Lorraine has her Miracle-Ear hearing aids, she and Dave interact more naturally. “Miracle-Ear has given me my life back,” Lorraine says, describing how she and Dave travel, sail and dine out without any shouting. “The greatest part,” she says, with a laugh, “is that Dave can sit on any side he likes.”
