A clear message

Meagan Orton admits that she's never used an iPod and doesn't really know how to operate one, which is unusual for a 21-year-old these days.

That makes her an odd candidate to be a voice urging young people to protect their hearing from overusing music players and other loud, sustained noises.

But the Stratford High School graduate, who competed in July for Miss South Carolina representing the College of Charleston, is passionate about spreading the word after she had sudden hearing loss at the end of her sophomore year. She's been making appearances at elementary, middle and high schools in an attempt to persuade kids to be proactive.

Her story is timely in the wake of a recent study published in the Aug. 18 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which showed that hearing loss among American teens (ages 12-19) jumped from 15 percent during a period of 1988-94 to 19.5 percent in 2005-06.

In fact, the study estimated that 6.5 million teens in the United States have some hearing loss.

The study and subsequent media reports sent shockwaves across the country, and the initial reaction was to blame portable music players. But researchers involved in the study indicated that based on the survey of subjects, loud music may be only partly to blame. They also indicated other factors, including improper nutrition, lack of exercise and obesity.

The wave yet to come?

Mount Pleasant-based audiologist Mary Anne Larkin says she's "very concerned" about hearing loss and that she thinks the earbuds used for music players today will create a wave of early onset hearing loss in the coming decade or two.

"I'm already seeing some patients in their 30s and 40s who have hearing loss more typically seen in people who are in their 60s and 70s," says Larkin, noting that she's yet to see many teens or young adults in her office. "Hearing loss is very insidious because it tends to be gradual."

And while the assault on hearing has been under way for 40 years already, Larkin thinks the buds, which can be placed deeper in the ear canal, are more dangerous than headphones previously used on the outside of the ear.

One easy guideline on earbud use, she adds, is that if a user's ears are ringing after removing the earbuds, it was too loud and caused damage.

The hard sell

With the lack of definitive information, persuading teens and young adults to protect hearing will continue to be difficult, as it has been with smoking and abusing alcohol, because the ramifications tend to be long-term.

Orton, however, is using her youth and experience to do what she can.

Her hearing loss is suspected to be tied with coming down with a foreign form of viral meningitis in the summer of 2008 after her freshman year. At that time, she had some blurred vision but no issues with her ears. Despite advice to rest a semester, the Honors College student worried about losing her scholarship and went back to school that fall.

At the end of her sophomore year, while she was giving a presentation during finals, she suffered sudden hearing loss.

"It was like a light switch," she recalls. "My whole right side turned off. I had numbness under my face and down my neck."

The next day, she went to her doctor and underwent a steroid treatment. But her full hearing never came back.

Because she is a dancer and is pursuing a minor in dance, she was devastated.

Today, she has partial hearing with a Baha implant in her totally deaf right ear and 30 percent natural hearing in her left, but it's far from adequate.

The stigma

Orton quickly found out who her friends were, she says.

While hearing may be taken for granted by many, few understand the lack of patience people have for the hearing impaired, as Orton discovered.

"Social situations were weird, and I was saying 'what' a lot," says Orton. "I was finding that people were getting really aggravated with me, understandably so. They were just as frustrated as I was. I learned to cope by trying to pick up pieces of what they were saying."

She learned to read lips from the front and side relatively quickly and relies on that to communicate now.

"I still have problems (understanding people) with accents and people who talk really fast," she says.

And because she learned to talk before losing her hearing, she has no speech impairment to indicate her disability, so meeting new people often requires that she tell them.

Despite her positive attitude and determination to have an enriching college experience, such as winning the Miss College of Charleston pageant, Orton still deals with daily obstacles, such as communicating in a room of 150 young women gathered for sorority rush functions.

"I run into a lot of trouble with my peers who don't have the time for it because they can't deal with having to repeat themselves," says Orton. "Plus, I'm a lot more tired because I have to concentrate more. Hearing is not a passive sense anymore, and it sometimes saps my energy."

Making good out of bad

Her message to young people to cherish and protect their hearing takes her bad luck into account.

"I start presentations out by telling my story how I lost my hearing and how it wasn't due to anything I did. It wasn't caused by loud music, but it still happened to me and it's affected my life greatly,

She sounds the alarm not only about damage from portable music players, but other sustained loud objects such as hair dryers and gas-powered lawnmowers. Yet she knows the denial is there and tries to offer reason.

"Kids will say to me that my hearing loss didn't happen because of an iPod, so why should I turn my music down," says Orton. "My response is, 'You're right, this didn't happen because of an iPod, but it could have. And it is something you can prevent. ... You have the opportunity to prevent hearing loss.' "

Reach David Quick at 937-5516 or dquick@postandcourier.com.

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