Doctors think high pressure in her ear could be one reason why. The twists, turns and shaking on the coaster that summer day probably made fluid leak from her inner ear, destroying important nerve endings.

"It was devastating,” she said Thursday. "My youngest child was two years old."

Life with her family, especially her two sons, was different. She felt sick and dizzy most of the time.

"I couldn't even hold my baby," she said. "My other one was learning how to ride a bike and I couldn't help him steady the bike because someone had to steady me. It was a real loss."

Life as she knew it outside of home was gone, too.

"When I interviewed to go back to work and start teaching again, I was afraid I wouldn't be hired because I wouldn't hear something correctly or I would answer a question wrong," Hoilman said. "I didn't want anybody to know about it."

Her audiologist, Dan Schumaier, said single-sided hearing loss affects thousands every year.

"There's 60,000 people who could wake up and their hearing's gone on one side -- about one every 15 minutes, as a matter of fact," Schumaier, an Elizabethton resident, said.

Hoilman tried hearing aids. She said they never worked. They would just make ambient noise louder and conversations no easier to understand.

Schumaier wanted to make something that would help patients like her. The Johnson City doctor who already had numerous patents wanted to come up with another one. He developed a device called TransEAR.

TransEAR’s mold sits in the bad ear, vibrates and sends a signal through the skull to the good ear.

"People have the sensation of hearing out of the other side," Schumaier said.

For seven of his patients who are now wearing it, TransEAR works.

"I don't think it really struck home until I actually put it on the first patient and that patient started crying and said I can hear now," he said.

The local inventor has given Debra her life back.

"I think just being more in crowds of people and being able to feel part of it…” she explained. “It's just such a quiet exclusion that you can't hear what's going on. I think just the social part of feeling like you belong again."

Christmas will be just like it was nearly a decade ago: "in stereo," as she puts it.

TransEAR is now available on a limited basis.

By WJHL NewChannel 11
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