When Anthony “Nay” Keller arrived at his Adams County home that Wednesday afternoon, his soon-to-be 3-year-old daughter Aspen gazed curiously at her dad’s new ear accessory — and it wasn’t a new set of earrings.
“Your ear, Daddy! It’s green!” she says, waltzing around the kitchen floor.
But little did Aspen know she gave her dad the greatest Father’s Day he could ask for: the sound of her own voice.
Anthony, 35, a Lancaster Bible College student studying leadership and ministry, started noticing hearing loss about five years ago. When masks became the new norm during the COVID-19 pandemic, he realized just how much he relied on reading lips to understand those around him.
And as time went on, Anthony’s hearing only got worse. He had a harder time hearing in crowded, noisy environments and had problems discerning speech. But what upset Anthony the most was not being able to communicate normally with his family — which meant never getting the chance to hear his youngest daughter Aspen’s voice.
“The only time that I could really know Aspen’s ‘voice’ was if she was upset, screaming and crying,” says Anthony, of Fairfield. “I would pick her up and hold her on the right side of my head, screaming into the hearing aids. I could tell there was noise going in, but I couldn’t discern anything she said.”
Hearing hurdles
Hearing loss, measured by decibel hearing level (dB HL), is scaled by the minimal level of decibels someone can hear a sound. Normal hearing is considered to be measured between 0 and 20 dB HL. When Anthony visited a specialist for an initial hearing test back in 2021, his decibel hearing level was measured at 40-50 dB HL. Two years later in 2023, Anthony’s hearing loss was measured at over 90 dB HL, rendering him essentially deaf.
After countless MRIs and CAT scans, specialists could not figure out any medical cause for Anthony’s condition. It is almost impossible to locate rapid profound hearing loss in adults, according to Anthony’s audiologist Virginia Wise.
After receiving two different rounds of hearing aids and amplifying them increasingly over time, they proved ultimately ineffective.
“I was just having more and more difficulty understanding the clarity of people’s speech as it kept progressing,” Anthony says. “[It sounded] like everybody was talking through a wet wash box.”
Anthony’s family spent the next years easily learning new ways to communicate, from learning sign language online together to speaking loudly and slowly with him. Samatha Keller, Nay’s wife, watched as Nay became less confident and more isolated, but was astonished by her family’s ability to adapt to his needs.
“Our family dynamic was molded to fit the needs of the situation,” Samantha said in an email. “We found a way to communicate clearly with each other and it created a refreshing form of conversation. Hearing loss never slowed us down as a family.”
His children, still in their developing years of early childhood, still maintained their connection with their dad, even if they needed to signal Mom for some occasional help.
“Aspen’s interactions with Nay were incredible to experience, and her patience redefined my understanding of grace,” Samantha says. “She grappled with language and Nay wrestled with clarity, she would repeat words five, six, and even seven times. Each repetition matched the same, patient tone until he understood.”
He switched from leading youth groups at Gettysburg Foursquare Church to working in the nursery, where he could be unbothered by screaming babies who he didn’t have to understand.
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Anthony "Nay" Keller listens to his then two-year-old daughter Aspen speak for the first time after his cochlear implant activation on May 28. Aspen turned 3 on June 3.
Learning accommodations
In the fall semester of 2022, Anthony took one his gen-eds, CML 102 - Foundations of Ministry, with Lancaster Bible College assistant professor Betty Bacon. The remote class hosted several open discussions surrounding the students’ aspiring future in ministry.
Anthony shared his determination to further his education in Ministry in class chats, while also expressing his struggle to learn with his disability.
“He’s such a deep well,” Bacon says. “He is such a deep, caring person with a passion for helping those around him.”
After Bacon learned that he was turning class Zoom calls up to maximum volume, holding the audio close to his barely-hearing ears, she knew she had to step in.
“I realized that I’ve never worked with a deaf student before, so I didn’t even really know what our resources were,” Bacon says. “I just wanted to make sure that he had every resource available to him.”
Bacon pointed him to Lancaster Bible College’s Ally Accessibility Services, a case-by-case disability resource center that allocates accommodations to students with disabilities. This service is universal across college campuses with compliance to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, 1973.
“I like to see our role as a guide, a philosopher and a friend,” Bacon says. ”Just like any good guide, you want to help those on the journey as much as possible.”
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Seeking surgery
While he and those around him did what they could to make it work, Anthony couldn’t help but feel isolated.
“As the hearing got worse, I noticed that I started withdrawing from a variety of social activities,” Anthony says. “I shied away from communication because I had a hard time hearing. I didn’t want to upset anybody by saying the wrong thing, because I heard the wrong thing.”
This was until April of 2023, where Anthony saw an audiologist for a cochlear implant surgery evaluation. Here, patients are put through a series of hearing tests in both loud and quiet settings to determine if their level or type of hearing loss makes them eligible for surgery.
Anthony, who scored in a low percentile, proved eligible for the procedure.
Cochlear implant surgery is typically two hours long, with activation occurring after three to six weeks of recovery. The implant is installed behind the ear with a minimal incision. A strand of metal electrodes is inserted into the cochlea, the ear’s auditory chamber, to conduct small electric pulses in place of failed auditory receptors.
Unlike hearing aids that amplify external sounds closer to the ear’s natural auditory organs, the implant bypasses the natural process by sending signals directly to the auditory nerves in the cochlea, according to Wise.
After being set up with a surgeon and getting a consultation, Anthony’s surgery date was set for April 27, 2024. After his surgery, he waited three to four weeks for his activation; where external hardware is attached to the implant to facilitate the necessary electric pulses.
On May 22, Anthony sat in Wise’s office at Central ENT Consultants in Hagerstown, Maryland, for his activation. Wise adjusted the implant’s hardware using her computer, setting threshold pulse levels at different surrounding volumes.
While he didn’t know what to expect, his excitement was through the roof. While he and his wife had joked about what she would first say after his activation, there were only three words she could manage to say in the moment: “I love you.”
“Walking into the appointment, I felt that deep-seeded exhilaration that someone feels when they’ve anticipated something that they’ve worked toward or counted down,” Samantha says. “He finally experienced the fruits of all of the labor involved in over a year of preparation.”
As Wise adjusted his thresholds, Anthony forgot that he wasn’t wearing his hearing aid. Astonished at how well he could hear Wise and his wife speak, he was brought to tears.
Because the implant facilitates an unnatural auditory process, Wise says that most patients find the robotic, staticky sense of hearing to be overwhelming. For this, they offer counseling and routine visits for gradual adjustment.
“It sounded like a Daft Punk song, like everything was very choppy and robotic,” Anthony says.
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Anthony "Nay" Keller poses for a photo after receiving his revolutionary cochlear implant surgery on May 28.
Quick adjustment
While it took Anthony a week or so to get rid of the robotic-like sounds of everyone’s voice, most patients take two to three months to fully adjust to talking, hearing and understanding sounds at a conversational level — something that Anthony did within minutes.
“He had unusually good initial results,” Wise says. “A lot of times it takes a few months to work up to as well as he was doing.”
Wise partially attributes his results to a relatively short period of hearing loss, but mostly holds Anthony’s unresting motivation as the cause of his success.
“Birds are going to be annoying,” Wise warned Anthony during his activation. “It’ll get old quick.”
Laughter filled the office as it was clear that Nay could hear, at least somewhat normally, once again. Immediately, he was immersed in various sounds of turn signals, traffic and water fixtures.
“It was exciting for certain,” Anthony says. “It’s been a lot of joy, but a lot of figuring out what sounds are, like, weird.”
That afternoon, Anthony greeted his little girls with tender arms as they hugged and congratulated him on his life-changing procedure.
“I just really wanted to see you,” 9-year-old Skyla says, brought to tears as she hugged her father.
Anthony is approaching his new life ahead with greater confidence and excitement. From being able to visit his parents, enjoying playful banter at work, to getting Aspen string cheese when she asks for it — he has realized the value of everyday conversation.
“Communication has been the big improvement for everything and everyone,” Anthony says. “It felt cool to not need an interpreter, have them write questions down or talk really loud just to be involved.”
Bacon kept in touch with Nay, sending him emails after landmark procedures and keeping a space for him in her prayer calendar. Hearing about Nay’s rapid improvement and assimilation to life she believes is a testament to his strong character.
“I just feel like he handled it with so much patience and so much faith and never let it kind of hold him back,” Bacon says. “Instead of it being a thing that held him back, it was the thing that propelled him forward. I think that’s like such a beautiful example for all of us.”
Today, Anthony has a lot of things planned for himself. Delving head-first back into his role at church, with intentions to pursue graduate school after getting his bachelor’s degree, his optimistic attitude keeps him going far.
“I am in awe of the lessons that God has granted from Nay’s hearing loss,” Samantha says. “I discovered a deeper connection with my husband and learned an amazing language. We learned to seek Him and we learned to love ourselves for who we are.”
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