September 29, 2023 at 5:50 a.m.

Rhinelander native, granddaughter collaborate on hearing loss book

Pictured is the cover of “Can She HEAR This Cat’s Meow?” by Julia Metternich OIson and her granddaughter Colleen Julia Cline. (Photo by Heather Schaefer/River News)
Pictured is the cover of “Can She HEAR This Cat’s Meow?” by Julia Metternich OIson and her granddaughter Colleen Julia Cline. (Photo by Heather Schaefer/River News)

By HEATHER SCHAEFER
Editor

As Julia Metternich Olson knows all too well, hearing loss is often invisible. This is especially true when the person suffering from hearing loss is a young person no one would suspect is struggling to communicate with others.

Olson, a Rhinelander native, was diagnosed with progressive bilateral sensorineural hearing loss while in her junior year of college and has spent decades developing strategies to live well despite her challenges. She also wants to help others dealing with hearing loss and their families. To that end, Olson and her granddaughter, Colleen Julia Cline, recently realized a dream when they teamed up to publish a book “Can She HEAR This Cat’s Meow?” It is subtitled “Living with Grandma’s Hearing Loss from a Kid’s Perspective.”

As the foreward explains, the idea for the book first came up when Olson’s granddaughter was only five years old. Now 25 and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Cline served as illustrator and co-author of the feline-themed story.

“We’ve talked about it for about 15 years but it became a real project about two years ago,” Olson said. “(Colleen’s) very artistic and has always done a lot of art and drawing, so when she was little we talked about that we should write a book.”

Olson said the storyline of the book comes from her granddaughter’s experience in learning how to get her hearing-impaired grandmother’s attention.

“I spent a lot of time with her when she was little. I babysat a lot, so we were together, and it always amazed me that she just knew that she had to get my attention if she wanted something,” Olson explained. “She knew that it was different with me.”

“As kids, we tend to take things as they are and not look too much deepers into what we know on a surface level,” Cline wrote in the forward to the book. “Grandma was different, but it didn’t matter. This turned out to be one of the greatest strengths in understanding how to, as a hearing person, help hard of hearing people understand what I’m trying to communicate. Simple things like keeping my attention towards Grandma, making sure my hair is out of my face, or gently tapping or nudging her work to make sure she knows it’s time to listen.”

Ironically, Olson was working toward a degree in speech education when she was diagnosed with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. 

She said she was “missing things” but didn’t realize it was the result of a hearing issue until she and her roommate had a unit on communication disorders.

“My roommate and friend in the same class said ‘you kind of meet that profile’ (of a person with a communication disorder) and I was like ‘No, of course I don’t,” she said. 

But she couldn’t help but realize that she was racing to get class so she could sit in the front row, she couldn’t converse with her roommate when they were in their bunkbeds at night and she was frequently asking her classmates about assignments because she didn’t hear the instructor.

“I realized I had to see people in order to understand them,” she said.

Olson doesn’t know precisely what caused her hearing loss but she knows she was exposed to a lot of noise in her youth. 

She often went hunting and trap shooting with her father and “that was the beginning of the rock and roll era.”

“There was just a lot of noise in my life,” she said, adding that she may also have had a genetic predisposition toward hearing loss.

At the time of her diagnosis, Olson was told there was nothing that could be done and she would be deaf by age 40.

She found ways to get by but hearing loss posed a constant challenge.

In 1983, Olson became involved in an organization that is now called the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA).

Through HLAA, Olson learned about adaptive technology and other ways to cope with hearing loss. 

In 2005, after seeing how newer technology was helping others with hearing loss, Olson took a big step and got a cochlear implant.

“I thought that this is it, I’m going to go for it and I’m so glad I did,” she said.

Olson remains very involved in HLAA and noted the organization will be hosting a major conference in Appleton this April. 

She encourages anyone dealing with their own or a family member’s hearing loss to attend the event.

For more information, visit www.hearingloss.org.

Olson and Cline’s book is available on Amazon and via catsmeow2167@gmail.com.

Heather Schaefer may be reached at heather@rivernewsonline.com.


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