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“Now that I can hear, every little thing in life is such a delight,” says Alice Arline, who is herself a delight. She can’t stop giggling when she talks about all the things she can now hear. For example, her daughter gave her a clock three years ago and one of the first things Alice did, wearing her hearing aids, was call her daughter to say, “Praise God! The clock you gave me ticks. I can’t believe it!” Using the elevator is now also a brand new experience for Alice. “I’d lived in this building for a year before getting my hearing aids. The first time I rode the elevator with them on, this strange noise startled me. I said to my girlfriend, ‘What in the world was that?’ She said, ‘Where have you been Alice? It’s just the elevator ding that goes off at every floor.’ We laughed and laughed. Truth is, I’d been in another world for ten years—deaf.”

Ten years ago, Alice had an audiogram and was told she needed hearing aids. She couldn’t afford them, so she ignored it. Her hearing deteriorated over time. Eventually all she could follow, in her beloved church services, was reading the Bible. “I used to sit in church and never know what in the world was going on. I couldn’t hear our preacher tell us which scripture he was going to read, and reading the Bible was about all I could do in the service. My friend would look up the passage for me and point to it. Now I look up passages and point them out to her. She can hear just fine, but it’s such fun for me to be on the other side of deafness, I can’t help myself.”

As with most hearing impaired people, Alice didn’t know the degree of her loss until she started wearing hearing aids. Now she tells everyone she sees about the Georgia Lions Lighthouse and about the importance of getting hearing tests. “Everyone at the clinic was so nice to me, from the secretary to Dr. Lori McCorry. In fact, everyone at that Lighthouse has been wonderful. Words can’t express the thanks I feel for being able to hear again.”