Twenty-four-year-old Caroline Love of Sugar Land, Texas, sits in front of the microphone as the “On Air” sign lights up and she begins to speak – which for someone who at one time couldn’t speak or hear is something of a miracle.

卡罗琳说：“自从来自国家公共广播代码开关播客的某人与我在德克萨斯基督教大学的新一年级我的新闻课程交谈以来，我想为NPR工作。”

A rare neurological condition nearly stopped that dream before it ever started. But Caroline’s mom, Mary, found someone at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth）谁能确保卡罗琳的未来梦想仍然可以实现。

Around the age of 4, Caroline started to develop subtle problems with her hearing. “She was not consistently responding to her name and she didn’t notice when a family member entered the room,” Mary said.

Mary took Caroline to several doctors including her pediatrician, an otolaryngologist, a speech therapist, and an audiologist, but none were able to provide an explanation for Caroline’s sudden inability to communicate.

“When I started to lose my ability to speak and hear, it was as if the volume on the world was slowly being turned down until it was silent,” Caroline said.

After nine months of worsening symptoms, in 2001 a neurologist performed a sleep-deprived electroencephalogram and made a tentative diagnosis of Landau-Kleffner-Syndrome (LKS), a rare disorder characterized by loss of language comprehension and verbal expression.

Looking for a second opinion, Mary, then working on her master’s degree in nursing at Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth, was referred by one of her professors to Ian Butler, MD, professor in the department of pediatrics at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and a neurologist with UT Physicians. Butler ordered further tests and confirmed the diagnosis of LKS. The tests showed abnormal electrical activity during sleep, disrupting Caroline’s ability to process information entering her brain, including sound.

“博士玛丽说，巴特勒告诉我们，大多数有这种诊断的孩子没有完全恢复其语言和认知功能，并且接下来的12个月对她的结果至关重要。

Caroline was put on medication to control the abnormal brain waves she was experiencing during sleep but over the next three months her condition deteriorated. “She could not speak or make any sound, and she could not understand spoken words or environmental sounds such as dogs barking or the doorbell ringing,” Mary said. “For all intents and purposes, a month before her fifth birthday, she was deaf and mute.”

巴特勒决定是时候尝试的新课程treatment. “I just had a feeling that we weren’t winning with what had been tried before and we needed to do something out of the box,” he said.

Caroline was started on a steroid which was increased over six weeks to a high daily dose.

At that time, she began to make sounds again – humming to music and making animal sounds while playing – and even regained the ability to say “mama,” Within four months of starting the steroid, she was speaking in brief sentences and her speech was becoming clearer. She continued to be on the steroid medication for another two years, along with doing intensive speech therapy. Weekly speech therapy sessions for another four years helped to continue development of her vocabulary.

Now Caroline is a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University pursing a master’s degree in journalism with a social justice investigative specialization. “I became a journalist because I’m passionate about telling stories that empower people who’ve suffered injustices,” she said. “I know what it’s like to live in silence, so I want to break that silence for others.”

巴特勒认为这是卡罗琳的故事如此鼓舞人心的原因。他说：“她的不足已成为她的力量。”