Medical student Eva Bergler is a trailblazer in her profession and in the ultra-marathons she undertakes in her leisure time. Her cochlear implants have opened doors for her career pathways. Eva was born in Germany but grew up in Christchurch after her family emigrated when she was four. Eva trained as a paramedic at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) when she didn’t initially make it into medical school.
Her accomplishment was groundbreaking as she was the first deaf person with cochlear implants to qualify in New Zealand. Since her success, a few students with either hearing aids or cochlear implants have followed. Once she graduated, Eva worked for Hato Hone St John for eight years full time in Auckland.
Her dedication shines through in the 13 years overall that she has been a St John volunteer. She now works as a casual paramedic in Dunedin while she is studying.Eva says being a paramedic is about the acute care at the bottom of the cliff when a patient needs help and she seeks continuity of care, a longerterm relationship with her patients, and the ability to make an ongoing difference in people’s lives. So, she is now retraining as a doctor at the University of Otago and is in her third year of the six needed to qualify, before working as a junior doctor for two years after that. Eva is interested both in rural medicine and working as a general practitioner away from the pace and stress of Auckland. Being a medical student is still ground-breaking.
“For a lot of people, cochlear implants are not something they have encountered before,” she says. “To be a doctor or healthcare worker with a hearing impairment, deafness or a disability is not common. Historically I do not think the medical professions as a whole have ever been particularly inclusive and in many ways they still aren’t. “There’s been a long overdue and very public drive to increase the ethnic diversity in healthcare, but there isn’t any visible drive to increase the shall we say ‘disability diversity’,” Eva says.
There are only a small handful of students in her class with a disability, which certainly doesn’t represent the 20% of the population with a disability, she says. Eva’s hearing loss was unexplained and first picked up as a mild condition during screening in her early school years. Her hearing progressively deteriorated over the following decade. She recalls that social occasions and connections with others were a struggle during her teenage years before her first cochlear implant in her left ear. Eva was 16 and in the final year of her high school studies when she had the surgery. Afterwards, she used a hearing aid in her right ear, but her hearing continued to deteriorate.
When she was in her mid-20s, Eva funded her second implant with the help of her family. “Losing my hearing definitely made social situations and work challenging environments. I don’t think I would have been able to get to where I am without my cochlear implants. “Getting a cochlear implant is a scary and daunting process and there are a lot of unknowns. It’s a big decision but I have no regrets. “It’s life changing – there is no other word for it.”
Eva loves tramping, camping and exploring over the summer months but the 32-year-old’s main pastime is trail running and taking part in ultra-marathons, which cover 50-55 kilometres. “Running keeps me balanced and happy. I definitely prefer trail running over road running,” she says. In the last six years she has been learning New Zealand Sign Language. “That’s a side of my identity that I’ve been exploring and growing because it’s a part of who I am.”