Miss-Delectable
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London Free Press - City & Region - Inspiring Londoners honoured
It's been 23 years since Cathy Chovaz last heard the shouts of joy and celebration that usher in a new year.
Trained as a nurse and working in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Chovaz -- named this week to London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best's new year's honours list -- was admitted to hospital on New Year's Eve 1984 and was found to have inflammation of the brain.
A series of strokes affected her mobility and vision -- before she went to sleep one night and awoke the next morning deaf.
She was later found to have a disorder, RED-M syndrome, so rare there were only 25 or so known cases at the time in the world.
Chovaz found the nursing profession was not ready to embrace her disability so she instead trained to become a psychologist, earning a PhD and becoming Canada's only deaf clinical psychologist, learning both to lip read and American Sign Language so she could communicate with patients.
She's now a psychologist at the Robarts School and also sees deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing clients in her private practice.
Chovaz is one of eight Londoners named to the mayor's honours list, people nominated by their peers and chosen because they serve as inspirations to everyone.
"It really is a recognition of people who have done extraordinary works," DeCicco-Best said.
It's been 23 years since Cathy Chovaz last heard the shouts of joy and celebration that usher in a new year.
Trained as a nurse and working in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Chovaz -- named this week to London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best's new year's honours list -- was admitted to hospital on New Year's Eve 1984 and was found to have inflammation of the brain.
A series of strokes affected her mobility and vision -- before she went to sleep one night and awoke the next morning deaf.
She was later found to have a disorder, RED-M syndrome, so rare there were only 25 or so known cases at the time in the world.
Chovaz found the nursing profession was not ready to embrace her disability so she instead trained to become a psychologist, earning a PhD and becoming Canada's only deaf clinical psychologist, learning both to lip read and American Sign Language so she could communicate with patients.
She's now a psychologist at the Robarts School and also sees deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing clients in her private practice.
Chovaz is one of eight Londoners named to the mayor's honours list, people nominated by their peers and chosen because they serve as inspirations to everyone.
"It really is a recognition of people who have done extraordinary works," DeCicco-Best said.