A Life of Resilience Dedicated to Helping Others

When Joan and John Calhoun received a diagnosis for their 2-year-old daughter’s illness, it was devastating. The family had been dealing with an unknown illness for weeks, and doctors were unable to pinpoint the cause. A desperate trip to the emergency room finally revealed the source — bacterial meningitis. But that diagnosis was only the beginning, with a side effect of the infection ushering in an unimaginable journey.

“A month after Hannah got out of the hospital, we had her hearing tested and they gave us the diagnosis — profound heading loss in both ears,” Joan said. “All of sudden, a gut punch and your world changes.”

That was 1996. Today, Hannah Calhoun AuD’20 is 30 and works as an audiologist for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, where she treats adults and children dealing with some of the same issues she’s already faced — hearing loss, cochlear implantation and learning independence.

“I work with the parents of young kids with hearing loss” Hannah said. “And for parents to see me as an adult who grew up with a cochlear implant, it helps them to see that their kids will be OK.”

She earned her Doctor of Audiology at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders at the UT Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. From early in her diagnosis of having lost her hearing, the Callier Center has played an important role in not only Hannah’s professional education, but also her development as a young person who uses a cochlear implant. The center was also an important resource for Hannah’s parents who came to trust the guidance of Callier staff when making decisions about her future.

While coming to terms with their daughter’s disability, Joan and her husband were told many things by health care providers. Doctors said Hannah likely would never drive and that they should consider enrolling her in the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin. At one point, the family was ready to sell their Plano, Texas, home to move closer to schools with services for deaf children in Dallas.

“Business associates of ours introduced us to the Callier Center, and from the beginning, they were just a world of resources,” said Joan, who as a Callier Ambassador now works to raise awareness of the center. “They gave us more positive information about Hannah’s future and what we could expect her to be able to do.”

Today, Joan is a member of the Callier Center’s Ambassadors, a group of supporters who work to bring awareness of the clinical services and training available at the Callier Center.

“I am grateful for the expertise and compassion that was available to us at the Callier Center,” Joan said. “We were very fortunate to have access to the services we needed.”

Hannah was 2 years old when the Calhouns began speaking to Callier audiologists about receiving a cochlear implant, a device that is inserted in a patient’s head and bypasses damaged parts of ear to stimulate the cochlear nerve with sound. The procedure was done in 1996 when Hannah received a single cochlear implant on her left side. Soon after, she began speech language therapy, a path she followed for 10 years while learning skills for living an independent life.

“I don’t remember the illness or having the implant surgery,” Hannah said. “Probably the first thing I remember is speech therapy. We had several therapists, including some at the Callier Center, and I remember therapists giving my parents a lot of support and helping them develop a language-rich environment that was so important for my development.”

Cochlear implant recipients must relearn how to hear with the device, which creates more of a robotic sound with different frequencies and tones than normal hearing.

“Hannah had to learn again what it was to hear,” Joan said. “We spent a lot of time teaching her the sound that letters made, not what the letter is called. Her therapy and the work we did at home helped her make sense of sound. She had to learn again what the sound for mama was.”

Joan said that by putting together the sounds of each letter in C-A-T, Hannah soon was able to recognize and pronounce the word. Reading soon followed, which Hannah said was an easy way to access visual language.

One of the most important skills that Hannah learned was advocating for herself.

“Being able to participate in conversations, I had to advocate for myself, like being able to identify what I missed in conversation and asking questions,” Hannah said. “Speaking up and asking if I can go into a quiet place. And in restaurants, I know which seat I need to sit in for clarity because I only have an implant on the left side, and I want people sitting on that side. In school I took classes in small classrooms when I could and sat as close to the teacher as possible. These are now just subconscious behaviors.”

While attending high school at Ursuline Academy of Dallas, Hannah started considering her future. She was accepted at The University of Texas at Austin and planned to major in physical rehabilitation, but a couple of life-changing events intervened. One was volunteering for the Callier Center’s cochlear implant summer camp where Hannah had an opportunity to speak to the parents of young campers about her own experience growing up with a cochlear implant.

“I talked to the parents about what I thought they needed to hear about their kids’ futures, and I was able to show them, through my example, a positive spin on their situation,” Hannah said. “It was really emotional seeing how much those parents needed to hear from someone like me who grew up with a cochlear implant and for them to see what their kids are capable of. That was transformative for me.”

Hannah said she realized that the world of people with hearing loss needs people like her who they can relate to. Hannah also volunteered with a preschool speech and language program for young children with hearing loss and said she recognized how working with the children was incredibly rewarding.

Before starting her freshman year, Hannah decided to change her major to communication disorders, setting her future in motion. After graduating from UT Austin, Hannah decided to enroll in a doctor of audiology graduate program and narrowed her focus to two of the highest-ranked programs in the country — Vanderbilt University and the Callier Center at UT Dallas. Hannah said her desire to work with patients helped her choose Callier, which provides some of the best clinical training experiences of any program in the nation.

“I had such a strong tie with Callier from my own experience growing up,” Hannah said. “And I knew that Callier was a strong community that I always felt a part of. I just felt like I belonged there.”

After completing an externship at the University of California, San Francisco, Hannah graduated from UTD’s School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences in 2020. She accepted her first position as an audiologist at Children’s Hospital in San Antonio, where she worked for two years before joining the staff of Kaiser in 2022.

Hannah says an important part of her clinical work is being able to relate to patients who have recently received cochlear implants.

“I know the importance of speech therapy, the importance of parent involvement and a language-rich environment. I know these things from my own perspective,” Hannah said. “The kids feel a little bit more understood. It normalizes the experience for them a little bit. And I think it gives me more power to relate with parents when they know you’ve gone through what their kid is going through.”

Joan said that the day Hannah told her she wanted to become an audiologist, the choice made perfect sense.

“What better person is there to serve as a doctor for young families whose child has been diagnosed with hearing loss?” Joan said. “She is proof that you can be very successful at whatever you want to do. It just takes work and training. What she has given to kids and seniors in her practice is huge. It’s invaluable.”

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