Shaindy Plotzker promised Hashem that if He’d return her voice, she’d use it to inspire Jewish women
Shaindy’s mother’s pregnancy took a dangerous turn when she contracted antibiotic-resistant pyelonephritis with MRSA. And while fortunately there was a treatment protocol, it had a few potential side effects, among them fetal hearing loss.
Her mother was no stranger to challenge. Just 20 years old, she already had a toddler with special needs. Now facing the prospect of a hearing-impaired child, she cried through the remainder of the pregnancy.
It turned out to be an unfounded worry. When Shaindy was born, she passed her neonatal hearing tests. She did experience slight hearing loss (which has since resolved), but isn’t sure whether it’s congenital (due to the fluid she always had in her ears as a child) or caused by the loud music she blasted as a teen. “It’s probably a combination,” she muses.
She does have hyperacusis, a sensitivity to sound and frequencies, but it manifests only when she’s in professional music studios and has to ask the staff to turn up the volume on her headphones. “They think it’s hilarious,” says Shaindy with her tinkling laugh. “They keep on asking if I can hear myself, and I keep on saying, ‘Can you turn it a little louder? A little more?’ ”
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