Kassie DePaiva is loud and clear about educating others on deafness

Actress Kassie DePaiva—“Blair” on the ABC soap One Life to Live—never could have guessed that a storyline from her own show would prove helpful to her own real-life medical drama.   

It’s 1997 and Kassie’s son James Quentin, or J.Q. for short, is born with profound hearing loss that would soon be diagnosed at around age one. . Kassie noticed something wasn’t quite right with her otherwise healthy boy when she observed her friend’s twins- months younger than J.Q.-- paying attention to conversations and babbling. J.Q. wasn’t.

“I had no indication of his hearing loss when he was born,” says DePaiva.-- At the time only 11 states mandated newborn screening, but since then, it’s up to about 39 states. When J.Q. wasn’t doing what the twins were doing, we just dreaded the possibility that it could be his hearing.”        

After an audiologist test confirmed her worst suspicions, the Kassie and her husband were crushed.

“They put high-powered hearing aids and sound on him and he was not responding,” she says.   “I could hear it through the headphones and my heart was breaking.”

Like many parents going through a crisis, Kassie says she had anxiety and fear, but just didn’t want to deal with it at the time.