When Jim Hagerty, a 58-year-old retiree from Westminster, Maryland, was a child, he had a series of painful ear infections. Doctors told his mother that these illnesses would almost certainly cause some permanent hearing loss. But as Hagerty grew into adulthood, he didn’t notice any hearing differences. He passed school hearing tests with flying colors and had no trouble communicating with colleagues once he started an engineering job with the state of Maryland. The only clue that something might be amiss were results from a work health fair hearing test showing that he was missing some higher frequencies.

It was only when Hagerty began volunteering at a nearby elementary school that he noticed something was wrong. He struggled with hearing the higher frequency of children’s voices, leading to frustration on both ends.

“The kids were getting frustrated with me, and it was a big stumbling block to interacting with them,” he says. “Out of wanting to continue volunteering, I decided to seek help.”

That’s when Hagerty made an appointment in July  2017 to see Johns Hopkins otolaryngologist–head and neck surgeon Matt Stewart. Initial hearing tests confirmed what Hagerty’s health fair evaluation had shown more than two decades earlier: moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss in the upper frequencies.

Although Hagerty stayed active in his community despite his hearing loss, that’s not the case for many hard-of-hearing patients, Stewart explains.

“Experiences with others can begin to contract because of the challenges of communicating verbally,” he says. “People with hearing loss may stop initiating conversations because they know they’ll have difficulty being understood, and others without hearing loss may stop reaching out because it’s so hard to communicate that way.”

To avoid future social limitations, Stewart discussed treatment options with Hagerty. Unlike other patients with different types of hearing loss, he was the perfect candidate for hearing aids. After a referral to Johns Hopkins audiologist Steve Bowditch to discuss different models, Hagerty returned for a second audiology appointment two weeks later to try out his new devices.

Bowditch gave him a quick tutorial on the hearing aids customized for his high-frequency loss, then placed one in Hagerty’s left ear, the one with the worst hearing. Suddenly, Hagerty was startled when Bowditch dropped a pen on his desk. Wearing both hearing aids, other sounds gradually emerged from all around him—fingers tapping on keyboards, his own footsteps, the crickets chirping around his country home. Since he hadn’t heard these sounds for so long, Hagerty says, he’d forgotten that they exist.

“People compare this phenomenon to the Wizard of Oz,” Bowditch says. “It’s like starting in black and white and ending in color.”

Hagerty is back volunteering for the school year and has surprised many students he’d previously met with his new and improved hearing.

“Everyone should get their hearing checked. I was able to get by, but think of all the things I missed,” he says. “I’m grateful that I was able to get those back.”