Sara Mearns, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, is sharing her story. After being diagnosed with nerve hearing loss, she found a world reopening.
00:00I'm going to try not to get emotional about it all, because when you're going through it, it almost seems impossible, including my hearing loss.
00:08Like, you do not see the light at the end of the tunnel.
00:11Arm, leg, arm, arm, arm, elbow.
00:18I'm Sarah Mearns, principal dancer at the New York City Ballet.
00:22I was always known as a very musical dancer.
00:25I study the music that I dance to. I go and listen to it at the Philharmonic or Carnegie Hall.
00:30Because without that music, I can't do what I do.
00:33I realized I couldn't hear anybody. I literally was missing everybody talking around me.
00:44I was missing a lot of the live orchestra that I danced to. My partners had to, like, signal to me what I can't hear.
00:52I was always exhausted, all the time, from, like, having conversations, talking to people, trying to hear people,
00:58trying to hear the music. It was just, like, it was so draining.
01:03When you're self-conscious about being in a room with people and knowing that you're not going to hear their conversation,
01:08or you're not going to hear the joke, you shy away from everybody and everything in your life.
01:14I was spiraling. I was completely spiraling down.
01:19I didn't want to go to the studio. I didn't want to perform.
01:23I was at the top of my game, but I was walking to work crying every day.
01:29Why did I not feel grateful? Why was I not happy doing this?
01:33When you've worked every single day of your life to get here, that's a problem.
01:39I sank even deeper into solitude.
01:44There was something wrong, but I couldn't figure that out.
01:47Sitting in Central Park on a bench on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m., nobody else is going to do this for me.
01:56I have to pick up the phone and ask for help.
01:58What did you expect to get out of hearing devices?
02:00How much better is it going to get?
02:02Like, I think that was my question of, like, is it all just going to come back?
02:06So I'm going to do a listening check.
02:08It was really emotional for me because I was facing something that was wrong with me.
02:12When my audiologist and I picked these Phonak hearing aids, I just thought it was so special that they made something that somebody like me can wear.
02:24As a performer, they'd given me part of my life back.
02:30My whole world just opened up.
02:33I remember your face vividly.
02:35You went, yes, that was exactly your expression.
02:39And I, like, started hearing things out there, like, outside the window, and I was like, wait, what's that?
02:45I found myself, like, getting excited to see, like, what I was going to hear.
02:48This dark cloud just completely lifted.
02:52I started tearing up on stage because I finally heard every single instrument and the power of it.
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