By Kayla Bruch

VIDEO: $150K could improve 4-year-old’s life

Oct 4, 2014 | 4:26 PM

One in every 80,000 children is born without outer ears on both sides. Danielle Carter’s daughter is the one.

Carter owns 4 Horsemen Fitness in Prince Albert. On Saturday, the fitness centre hosted a weight lifting fundraiser for daughter Arabella, and her new outer ears.

Carter said four-year-old Arabella was born with Bilateral Microtia. This means her external ears or pinnas are not developed.

Carter said her daughter has her cochlear but she doesn’t have a middle ear, which changes vibrations in the eardrum into sound waves in the inner ear.

Carter said they have done a lot of medical testing and there isn’t a specific reason this condition happened to Arabella. However, doctors said that it may have had something to do with her two-vessel cord during pregnancy.

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“[Having a two-vessel cord] means it cut off some blood supply to the fetus,” said Carter.

Currently, Arabella wears a hearing aid which allows her to hear like everyone else.

“Her hearing aid is called a Bone Anchoring Hearing Apparatus and with that she is actually able to hear,” said Carter.

Carter said the device works by sending sound waves to her cochlear, in the inner ear and helps to amplify sound, just like an outer ear would do.

“It’s like a mega phone,” said Carter.

Arabella got her first Baha hearing aid when she was about two or three months old, but has needed replacements since then. 

“This will be her third one that were getting replaced just because her level of speech has come up so dramatically,” said Carter.

Carter said the plan is to get Arabella two devices this time around, instead of just one.  Carter hopes by getting two devices they will last longer. Carter said fundraising is critical because the device costs around $5,000 dollars. She said the government doesn’t recognize Arabella as being hearing impaired, but only as having the loss of a limb.

“Unfortunately, they’re not covered even under a government health plan or anything, so it’s been a lot of fundraising,” said Carter.

Carter said Royal Purple helped with the first fundraising initiative and this time the Elks are working to raise funds for one of the two hearing aids.  

Carter was emotional as she said Medpor ear surgery is only offered in the U.S., with a price tag of $150,000 dollars for both ears.

“There’s three doctors within the states that do Medpor surgery,” said Carter. “It’s actually only one surgery per side and it’s very non-evasive, they don’t have to take a rib graft out to do it.

In Canada, Arabella would have to undergo rib graft surgery, where they take out the rib and mold it into an ear. This would mean between four and seven surgeries per side.

Despite every struggle, Carter said her daughter is speaking better than they had ever hoped.

“She’s been able to beat all the odds.”

Carter said the fitness centre will host the fundraiser every fall and spring for a year and a half.

kbruch@panow.com

On Twitter: @KaylaBruch1