Profile: Volunteer Audiologist Janis Wolfe Gasch

Seeing the smiles and tears of children who are able to hear for the first time is the most rewarding feeling for Janis Wolfe Gasch, an audiologist at St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic.

Gasch said the best part of her job is “knowing that (the children) can go to school and hear, and just opening up their world to them.”

Gasch heard about the clinic back when it began as an orthopedic clinic. Physical therapists were brought in to work with patients and were noticing speech delays.

A bilingual speech pathologist was hired at the clinic from St. Mary’s Hospital in Tucson. At that time, Gasch was working at the hospital as an audiologist and was asked to come down and volunteer at the clinic.

Since 1977, she has been volunteering the first Thursday of every month.

Depending on the day and the number of follow-ups, Gasch treats between 10 to 25 patients a day.

Gasch’s position is to size children for their hearing aids after their hearing has been tested in a lab by audiologist Dr. Ted Glattke.

“It’s pretty fun,” Gasch said.

After children are sized for their hearing aids, Gasch said, “some of the kids go and stand in front of the mirror and make tons of sounds and faces.”
Gasch’s favorite patient started coming to the clinic when she turned four-years-old and now, years later, the woman comes to the clinic with her four-year-old daughter.

There are many challenges that Gasch has faced over the years at the clinic. One of the biggest problems is inconsistency with the patients she sees every month, she said.

“The difficulty is the kids getting across the border,” she said.

If they are unable to cross, they do not show up and are not able to receive the hearing aids that have been made and are on hold for them, she said.

“We have to accommodate to basically their lifestyles,” she said.

If a family is unable to pay the bus fair to get them to the clinic, some parents in the past have made homemade tamales and tortillas - anything to make medical treatment for their children possible.

“Parents and grandparents are very interested in the process,” Gasch said.

The majority of hearing aids such as Phonak aids and Resound aids are donated and the rest are bought from various manufactures.