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| L. to r.: Twin sisters Alexandra, Victoria, parents Mark and Krista, and sister Gabriella |
Sixteen-year-old twin sisters Alexandra (“Lexi”) and Victoria (“Tori”) don’t conform to the stereotypical ideal of twins. The fraternal twins don’t look alike (Lexi has blonde hair while Tori’s has dark brown), they don’t dress alike (well, not anymore) and they don’t hear alike. Lexi has perfect hearing while Tori has struggled her whole life with severe to profound hearing loss. That significant difference in the twins was not as easy to detect as one might think – not when they were babies, and not now either.
Tori’s mother Krista remembers that as a baby, Tori often wouldn’t respond to her name being called. Yet when her father walked in the door from work, Tori would often turn to look at him as though she had heard the door open. A well-meaning pediatrician advised Krista not to compare the twins. The difference became increasingly obvious, though, and finally, at 16 months, Tori received hearing aids, and then her first cochlear implant (CI) at age four.
Tori has had some significant struggles but hearing technology has enabled her to live a relatively normal life. She never needed to learn sign language. In fact, Krista laughs recalling that when she would sign “I love you” to Tori as she rode off to school on the bus, Tori would fling open the bus window and yell back, “I love you, too, Mom!”
In church, Tori would occasionally read a scripture passage during a Sunday service. So normal was her speaking that parishioners were shocked to discover she was hearing-impaired and usually only found out when Tori wore her hair in a pony tail, revealing the CI sound processor behind her ear.
Just last year, Tori had her first implant replaced, and in June of this year, she had a second Advanced Bionics CI implanted. Even before she received her second CI, Tori earned a 4.0 grade point average. Now with bilateral implants, she is poised to catch even more of what goes on in class, providing a boost to her efforts at academic achievement.
Tori plays lacrosse and is a talented artist and musician as well. “She can look at anything and draw it,” raves Krista. She may gravitate toward a career involving creativity such as architecture or design, although lately she’s been leaning toward audiology so that she could be an inspiration to other kids who are going through some of the same challenges she’s overcome.
“She’s so normal, she’s often invisible,” says her mom. “But she does miss things. She doesn’t hear like we do. She has to look at people’s faces. Background noise makes things very difficult for her and it’s so noisy at her school in the hallways and at lunchtime, I don’t know how she copes.”
Tori also plays guitar and listens to music “24/7” according to her mother, her iPod being an almost inseparable companion. Some of her favorite bands are The Kooks, Coldplay and The Strokes. She and her father Mark took in a Coldplay concert not long ago.
Mark reflects: “I didn’t really comprehend how far Tori had come until I took her to the Coldplay concert. Besides the obvious irony of taking my deaf daughter to a rock concert, what really struck me at that moment was remembering the day my wife and I were in the audiologist’s office and we were told she was profoundly deaf. We were devastated. I pleaded with God that day to just give her a normal life without too many struggles. If you would have told me then that, 13 years later, I would be taking my music-obsessed, guitar-playing daughter to see her favorite rock band, I would have said you were crazy. But here I was with Tori, listening to Chris Martin sing the words to their song ‘Yellow.’ ‘Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do, yeah, they were all yellow.’ Indeed.”
If there’s any positive to Tori’s disability, Krista sees it in Tori’s ability to move forward through the challenges that come her way. “I think it stinks in every way, shape and form for a kid to have to struggle like she has,” Krista says. “I would trade places with her tomorrow if I could. But Tori is a very independent, confident person. I don’t know if this is her personality or because she’s had to overcome so many challenges. Obstacles don’t often throw Tori, whereas they can become a big setback for other kids to whom things have mostly come easy. When you see her you believe anything is possible.”
Jamie Morrison is a freelance writer. Visit him at www.word-spring.com.
