MILLVILLE, Minn. — Like many children and adolescents, Dennis Stelling is getting ready for another school year.
But his journey to the classrooms of RCTC's accounting program is more inspiring than you might expect.
Stelling, 51, who lives just outside Millville, was until 2013 the owner of a 100-cow dairy farm his grandparents purchased in the 1930s. Although Meniere's disease forced him to sell the business, he's back studying another subject he loves, after cochlear implants brought him new energy. We've got his full story.
When did you realize you wouldn't be able to farm anymore after getting Meniere's?
I was first diagnosed in 1992 in my left ear. They did some treatments that took care of the vertigo for the most part, and I farmed just fine though I was deaf in that ear by 1995. Then I got it in my right ear in 2005. By 2013, I was having vertigo attacks at least weekly, if not more often, and losing my hearing in my right ear too. I was trying to run a business by email and text message because I couldn't talk on the phone. Driving tractor made me nauseated.
I told people that if I was in a career where I could go to my boss and say I needed a year's leave to get my head wrapped around this, that's what I would __have done. But when you're the boss and employee and owner, you don't __have that option. There was no way that I could physically continue to operate the farm at the level it needed to be. In 2014 I sold the cows, and in 2015 I sold most of the land off. We sold it to my cousins, who have a dairy farm at the end of the road. I knew it would stay in a crop rotation with them.
When did you decide to try cochlear implants?
People were bugging me that I needed to get hearing aids. I knew those wouldn't help with the type of hearing loss I had. I could hear but everything sounded muffled. I went to Mayo Clinic for my vertigo and met with the ENT specialist. I asked out of frustration if there was anything he could do for the hearing loss. I expected him to say no. When he said I'd be a perfect candidate for cochlear implants, it was surprising. I was tired of not being able to hear.
What was it like when you got them put in?
I didn't know what to expect. I told my wife that if I got some hearing back, great. If I didn't, I'm not any worse off. They did my left ear first because the hearing in my right ear was still fluctuating. I asked in June 2013, two months later I had the first surgery, and a month after that, I was activated. I was hooked up to a wire and a computer, and the audiologist looked at me and said, "Are you ready for this?" And I said, "Well, yeah." She pushed the key and started talking, and I could hear her. It sounded a little funny, but I could hear and understand her instantly.
When they did the right ear in 2015, I had that experience behind me. This isn't the experience that most people have. I had also learned that most people have to go through a rehabilitation process to learn to hear again, but you could also have it immediately. When they turned the second ear on in April 2015, it was immediate again. I was more emotional at that one than the first one. It was the first time in 20 years that I'd had two ears that worked.
How did you decide to go back to school to be a CPA?
That happened by accident. My wife is an LPN and she's always wanted to be an RN. One day last summer, I suggested we drive out and see what RCTC had. She said I should look into going back to school.
The winter before, I had started working for a friend doing taxes. He had mentioned to me during tax season that he does bookkeeping on the side, and he was wondering if I'd be interested in doing that. I enjoyed doing the taxes, and when he suggested the potential of me working for him, I thought maybe I should go back to school and brush up on my skills. I did all the books for the farm for the whole time I was here. If I'm going to be doing it for someone else, I want to have a degree behind my name. It makes me more marketable. So I picked up the information, and when we left, I was signed up to go into accounting. I'll be graduating this next spring with my Associate's degree in accounting, with plans to go on to Winona State and possibly getting my CPA degree.
I told a few people that when I was a senior in high school, I thought about going into accounting, but when you have the opportunity to farm, that's what you do. If I hadn't, I would have been an accountant all this time. I think it'll be a good fit.
What has it been like being in school?
It hasn't been as big of an adjustment as I expected. It's a little intimidating when students in the class are the same age as my kids, but they've been cool, and professors have been great. It's given me opportunities to talk about my cochlear implants, because they'll look at me and every once in awhile someone will ask me what those things on top of my head are.
I've gotten in the habit of visiting with my professors before the semester starts to let them know I have a hearing impairment. I have a personal microphone that goes directly to my implants that the professor wears. I've found out that three of my professors have hearing impairments themselves. It's been a connecting point; they've seemed more comfortable talking about hearing loss after meeting me. As far as the course work, it's not been terribly challenging, but it's busy.
After you graduate, what is your next step?
The plan is right now to possibly go to WSU and RCTC both during spring semester, because I have a couple courses that I need to take to WSU as prerequisites for the business program. It depends how busy we get in the tax office. I don't want to kill myself working full-time. But my fall and summer are pretty much wide open.
As long as I'm feeling good, I'll keep pushing. I've never been one to sit around and feel sorry for myself.
About Meniere's Disease, from Mayo Clinic:
- Meniere's disease is a disorder of the inner ear that causes episodes in which you feel as if you're spinning (vertigo), and you have fluctuating hearing loss with a progressive, ultimately permanent loss of hearing, ringing in the ear (tinnitus), and sometimes a feeling of fullness or pressure in your ear.
- The cause of Meniere's disease isn't understood. One popular theory that hasn't been proved is that Meniere's disease appears to be the result of the abnormal amount of fluid (endolymph) in the inner ear. This often shows on autopsies, but it's not clear that it causes the episodes.
About Cochlear Implants:
- Part of them is removable. The sound processor sits on the outside of the ear, which transmits sound as digital information to the implant just under the skin. Dennis cannot hear at all when he removes them, but he can do so to shower, for instance.
- The digital sound signals reach the cochlea by way of an electrode. Then nerve fibers in the cochlea transmit the signals to the brain, which processes them as sound Dennis can hear.
- Cochlear implants differ from hearing aids in that they don't amplify sound. They bring it directly to the hearing nerve.
- Unfortunately, the implants have no effect on the vertigo of Meniere's Disease, but Dennis has luckily not had a vertigo attack for 2 years. "They could come back at any time," he said. "That's just the nature of the disease."
Source: Cochlear Ltd.
