‘I can hear.’ Tears of joy flow when Coast woman is fitted with a new sense of sound.

Libby Riley has struggled to hear since she was two months old, when a persistent fever left her partially deaf in her left ear.

When she was in elementary school, kids bullied her and her mom would have to make sure she sat at the front of the class to hear the teacher.

She worked through those struggles and graduated with honors. Now, the 55-year-old Coast woman works as a nurse in a specialized treatment facility.

Although she had struggled to hear for her whole life, the last couple months her hearing started to progressively get worse with high pitches, muffling and crackling in her ear.

“I couldn’t hear the birds or the cars when I was sitting on the porch,” Riley said.

She went to doctors, who gave her antibiotics and steroids to no avail.

On a whim, her mom called Miracle-Ear, a hearing aid company that she had seen ads for on TV.

“The doctors kept saying, ‘it’s going to be OK,’ and I kept saying, ‘it’s getting worse’,” Riley said. Faced with the potential of going completely deaf, she listened to her mom and went to Miracle-Ear’s office in Gulfport.

For the first time on Wednesday, Riley was fitted with hearing aids and her newfound hearing brought her to tears.

“I can hear,” Riley said with the new hearing aids in. “It’s like putting on glasses. Everything jumps off the page.”

Riley wasn’t the only one brought to tears.

“I’m just so happy for her,” said Orelia Stallings, Riley’s mother. “This is a day to remember.”

Hearing aids are not cheap and Riley was able to get them in part thanks to the Miracle-Ear foundation, a charitable organization run that provides funding for people in need.

“This is the most awesome thing in the world,” said Phil Sturtevant, the hearing instrument specialist that gave Riley her hearing aids. “Realizing the impact it has on an individual to hear again, it is amazing. Helping people here again is amazing, I absolutely love it.”