Imagine never hearing your kids’ voices — ever. Texas mom Dawn Keim has been going deaf for most of her adult life because of a genetic condition. And hearing aides don’t work for her. She’s gotten by through lip-reading, but until recently, she’d been living in silence.

Dawn had never heard her 8-year-old son’s voice. Well, she says she’d always heard his voice in her head, but never in real life. So imagine how thrilled she must have been to get a breakthrough procedure: A cochlear implant. Finally, she’d get to hear her son’s voice for the first time!

Dawn Keim is appearing on the talk show, The Doctors, which offered to have this procedure done for her. I was totally surprised at what Dawn said when she talked about anticipating hearing her son’s voice. “I’m not afraid of surgery. I’m afraid of hearing.” Can you imagine? Intense! “Maybe I’m afraid of what I will hear compared with what my brain tells me I hear.”

You have to see the video because it’s such a heart-squeezer. She and her son both cry when she hears him talk. He tells her he loves her — about the sweetest words any mom can hear her child say! And she’s so, so lucky to be able to hear her son’s little voice while he’s still a child. There is NOTHING like the sound of a child’s voice. In a few short years, that voice will be gone. Dawn is so lucky to have heard it before it was too late.

Okay, get ready to cry. This is such a beautiful moment.

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