My Little Ear: Hi, I'm Ben.

I'm 16 years old, and I love sports, cooking, playing the piano, playing with my five-year old brother and science.

I was born with a condition called microtia aural atresia.

I decided to write this blog to help kids with microtia and to increase awareness of microtia aural atresia as well as hearing impairment and deafness.

Microtia affects about 3-5 out of every 10,000 births (and microtia aural atresia affects about 1 in 6,000). An estimated 36,000 people in the United States and 334,000 globally are born with microtia. Since it is a congenital deformity (I hate that word, by the way), it cannot be reversed or fixed.

I don't think there are many reflections from the perspective of kids (especially boys) who grew up with microtia, so I thought it might be useful to others to share my perspective as a partially deaf teenager with microtia aural atresia.

Most of all, I wanted to assure you (kids with microtia) and you (parents of kids with microtia) that kids with microtia can grow up happy and successful - just like kids without microtia.

This website was written for:

- kids who have microtia
- parents with kids who have microtia
- friends of people with microtia
- anyone else interested in learning about microtia and related topics

This is for you.

Captions for photos above: Top is a recent photo of me. Bottom is a recent photo of me in a research lab with one of my wonderful mentors.

Note: I apologize in advance for some of the wacky formatting you might encounter on this website. I tried my best, but sometimes the templates had a mind of their own, and I am only so-so at HTML editing (as you can see).

Thank you for reading.