Ellen Degeneres invited a special guest to her show back in 2011, and the episode has got some recent attention again on the topic of healthcare.
Sarah is a mother of two small children. The difference between her and other mothers is that until eight days before the episode was filmed, she was completely deaf. This is because she was born with abnormal DNA which caused the hairs in her middle ears, responsible for transmitting sound waves to the brain, to keep from forming. Sarah was deaf until a medical procedure gave her the ability to hear, and at age 34, Sarah’s life was forever changed.
Sarah had listened to things she had never heard before. For the first time, she had heard the sound of her children’s voices. She had heard the sound of laughter, music, and she discovered the sound of her husband’s loud snoring.
The medical procedure that allowed Sarah to hear costs $30,000 per ear, which is beyond what Sarah and her husband would have been able to afford on their own. So Sarah’s mother-in-law, Lari, selflessly cashed in her retirement savings to pay for Sarah’s hearing device out of her own pocket. So far, Sarah has only one implant and minimal chances of ever being able to afford the second one.
This is where the story has become a hot topic again. How can a procedure like this not be covered by insurance? Youtube’s comment field has seen recent ad-ons from people accusing insurance companies of being more and more stingy as time goes on. There was also the obvious reminder of America being the only first-world country not to care for its citizens’ health:
“Glad i was born in Canada my universal health care covered everything so i can hear today. America needs to wake the f**k up because its actually a very effective system.”
Sarah was lucky to have caught the attention of Ellen Degeneres, who was so touched by Lari’s act of kindness, that she decided to invite the whole family to her show. And Ellen being Ellen, loving surprises the way she does, teamed up with the company that supplied Sarah with the original implant to arrange this surprise for her. Watch the clip and see what she did. Enjoy!
Featured image is a screencap from video.
