Music to her ears

Dale Oftebro almost made it through the “Battle Hymn of the Republic’’ without tears at church on the Sunday after the Fourth of July.

But when a trumpet joined in, “I lost it,” said the 54-year-old Goleta woman. “I cried.”

A year before, Oftebro could not hear the sound of a trumpet. Nor could she hear any other sound for 50 years.

Now, her hearing, lost in childhood, has been restored thanks to a technological marvel called a “Bionic Ear.”

“Rush Limbaugh has the same one I do,” she said of the radio talk-show host, calling it “definitely a miracle.”

Since getting a cochlear implant last summer at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Los Angeles, she said, “The biggest joy by far is the music. It’s the thing I hoped for and didn’t expect.”

Hearing “Taps,” she said, “It sounded exactly how I thought it would. I discovered I love trumpets. It’s just so beautiful.

“Who would have thought after all those years of no hearing, that technology would get to the point in my lifetime that I would regain my hearing?” marveled the mother of three grown children.

The device developed by Advanced Bionics in Valencia consists of three parts. A small earpiece picks up sounds transmitted to a battery-operated processor at her waist. Signals travel to a receiver that stimulates the auditory nerve and which was implanted behind her ear in out-patient surgery in June 2001. Shortly after, the device was activated.

“All I was hoping for was environmental sounds,” she said. “The actual outcome was far beyond anything I anticipated.

“I was going around doing things to see what kind of noise they make. The first noise that took me by surprise was the ATM machine. It beeped at me.”

Although she had worked in the Dos Pueblos High School library since 1989, she learned the book scanner beeped. “The light switch made a noise. The first bird I ever heard was a crow. It’s interesting how noisy nature is.”

Now, “I can call and order a pizza.”

Only twice has she turned down the volume, in a Costco checkout stand and when her son gave a Super Bowl party for 70 friends.

After losing her hearing as a preschooler in Whittier when an antibiotic damaged a nerve, she managed astonishingly well.

“What enabled me to go to school is I lip-read very well,” she said. Retaining her speech, “I was blessed in that way.”

Her parents moved to Solvang so she could attend the smaller Santa Ynez Valley High School where she played clarinet in the marching band. “The clarinet has specific fingering for the notes,” she explained.

Also, she started folk dancing in 1964. “I was a good dancer. It helps if you have a partner who feels the beat.” She and her family still dance annually at Solvang’s Danish Days.

She graduated second in the dietetics department at Cal Poly, where she met her husband, Ron, at a Lutheran college group. They married in her senior year, as he was getting an MBA, and moved to Santa Barbara in 1972.

Perhaps partly because of her outgoing personality, as she raised three children, “My hearing loss was never an embarrassment to them.”

Today, Ron is a consultant. Son Kris, a Cal Poly graduate, is married and has a 16-month-old daughter. Erik just graduated from UCSB and Karina is a sophomore chemistry major at Cal Poly.

At Erik’s graduation, Oftebro said, “I heard every name. It was wonderful.”

A newspaper story in 2000 about a man who received an earlier type of cochlear implant inspired her odyssey. She was helped by an organization of persons with hearing loss called the SayWhatClub. She went to the House Ear Clinic, an implant pioneer, determined to be an acceptable candidate. Insurance paid the approximately $50,000, which covered evaluation, surgery and hardware. A wait for insurance proved a blessing as she got a new, upgraded device.

“I put it on when I get up and take it off when I go to bed,” said Oftebro, who is eager to spread the word. “There has been no downside. It’s all been up.”

Music to her ears

Cochlear implant completes the circle for Dale Oftebro.