Earlier this week, Gracie Prang was shocked to hear the crunch of snow clearly for the first time in her life.

“The simple things that the rest of us take for granted are really popping up and we’re seeing it. It’s really exciting,” her mother Stephanie Schneck told CTV’s Your Morning Monday.

Without hearing aids, the 10-year-old’s hearing can drastically fluctuate from near hearing loss to being perfectly fine. This is because of fluid which can fill up her inner ear, making sounds seem like she’s underwater.

“You can be a foot in front of her face screaming at her and she couldn’t hear you,” Schneck told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Monday.

She feels fortunate to have received a donation from Kinsmen Telemiracle Foundation to cover the specific $6,400 pair of hearing aids for Gracie, because her family couldn’t afford them. But she says it should have been covered by the Saskatchewan government and that other families aren’t going to be as lucky.

For months, Schneck has been calling for changes to the province’s , which were changed in 2017 with a stronger focus on parents and adults going through registered private sector clinics.

Last week, she directly, but Health Minister Jim Reiter told CTV Regina at the time: “We’re going to get her some answers as soon as we possibly can.”

Schneck said “(the province) buys certain hearing aids in bulk and they give you the option to purchase them at a discount but there’s no actually funding program.” For families like hers, she said, “there’s really a whole lot of nothing.”

According to Schneck, three audiologists told her that the only options for her daughter were permanent surgical implants, which wouldn't work because Gracie’s bones are still developing; a more expensive headband or the hearing aids Gracie has now; or the Adhear implants, a non-surgical bone conduction hearing system which connects to a hearing aid in her ear canal.

Schneck said the last option was the best for her daughter who’s extremely active and loves driving 4-wheel quads, fishing and hunting. Because going through the , her mother took her to private audiologists who can’t provide financing help.

“You pay up front or you don’t get your hearing,” she said.

She doesn’t want other families to fall through the cracks and wants the government to step up.

Health Minister Jim Reiter emailed a statement to CTVNews.ca saying his office reached out to Schneck to try and figure out how her daughter’s hearing aids’ “new technology might fit within our provincial programs.”

The statement also adds that the devices are “so new that the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health does not have any additional information on it. We’ve asked them to investigate further, and hope to hear back in the coming weeks.”

Gracie’s pediatric audiologist, Dr. Karen Sharpe, who had worked for the province up until Saskatchewan’s cuts in 2017, said that for families like Schneck’s, the options are very limited.

“It’s just part of the cuts of 2017 and I don’t know if there’s other options,” she said, adding that she believes the government wasn’t aware of the situation before or realized how the cuts were affecting people.

“The government does provide hearing aids (cochlear and surgical processors) but they’re traditional hearing aids and in Saskatchewan I know the waitlist can be long,” Sharpe said, adding that,even then, people sometimes raise the money to pay for them through websites like GoFundMe.

Sharpe added that it could be feasible to provide the type of aids Gracie needs through the government.

As someone who’s been bothin the public and private sectors, Sharpe said the province could possibly run these aids through the supplementary health program which is traditionally only used for low-income families.

Schneck says her daughter was fortunate in that the Kinsmen Telemiracle Foundation, which helps people get special needs equipment and medical treatment, stepped up to pay for the hearing aids.

“According to the school, she has done a complete 360. She can pay attention, she can be a part of group conversations, she can be a part of regular socialization in class,” she told CTV’sYour Morning.

In September, she started a for the aids but after the foundation agreed to pay for them, Schneck says any excess money is going towards helping other children in similar situations.

“Money donated here from this point on, is going to be put towards starting a non-profit charity for (kids) in need of hearing aids,” the description on the fundraising page reads.