And Then There Was None...

To a hearing person, the loss of sound is frightening. Panic worthy. As much as my cochlear implant and hearing aid help, there are times that wearing them is painful to my ear canal and head and I need small breaks without them to recover. Having "impaired" but viable hearing in one ear helps during these times. I can navigate the ins and outs of my day at home alone with only the residual hearing I have in my better ear.

I have longed feared that another sudden sensorineural hearing loss would rob me of what's left, even though my audiograms of that ear have remained relatively stable for several years now. I rely on that ear for better speech comprehension, media streaming, and music. My CI "helps" me hear, but it isn't really good enough for me to comfortably make it in my hearing environment alone.

Last week while spending a week at our Colorado cabin, I noticed my ear popping and equalizing the pressure as normal, but it was affecting the clarity with which I could hear, and there was an annoying ache deeper inside than I could explain. I could tell that my ears were compensating and I was hearing more from the CI processor than my hearing aid. I avoided playing a game with the family since I knew I was having trouble hearing. It was only after I retired to my bed to read some and I took off my hearing devices to experience the full impact of the dread I have always feared. Complete and utter silence. I could not even hear my own voice.

Panicked, I hastened my husband upstairs and he brought along my daughter, a physician's assistant in an ENT specialty. Without her instruments, she could only try to reassure me that with the earache, it was likely an infection or eustachian tube disfunction.  I was lucky to get an appointment the next morning with a nurse practitioner at the local clinic in an adjacent town. Expecting that this small town clinic would have no experiences with sudden sensorineural hearing loss, my daughter came with me and examined my ear to find a retracted eardrum. Even when I "popped" my ear, it remained retracted and all sound above a slight vibration and buzz was gone. She suspected that it was a conductive loss because of the retraction, but given my history, she couldn't be sure. The only course of treatment was to receive a high-dose course of steroids once again, which is the prescribed treatment for both conductive and sensorineural hearing loss. She consulted with the nurse practitioner about the proper dose. Meds were prescribed and we were on our way.

4 days later, I have hearing in that ear again. Not as much as before, I can tell, but enough that my panic has subsided. I will see my otologist in 3 days for an audiogram. That will provide more insight into just what occurred last week. I am confident that I have not completely lost this ear, but I will most likely need a hearing aid adjustment to compensate for the event.

What surprised me through this time is how reliant I had become on my better ear and using only my hearing aid for my day-to-day tasks. I honestly don't like the CI and I don't wear it unless I will be in hearing environments that warrant better hearing. What I found out is that while my other ear has been recovering, my CI is better than I'd thought. I've done ok with it alone, if not as good as both ears.

For now, I have 6 more days of Prednisone treatment working to stop the attack on my ears and hearing. And I have a CI that I must don from sunup to bedtime now if I am to hear well enough to get through the day. I do not embrace this deafness willingly or graciously. It is the lot I've been dealt. And all I can do is deal with it.

I will keep you updated when I know more.

I Wish You Deafness

My wish for you is deafness if only for a day. Hard-of-hearing, impaired, disabled, whatever it's called. Then maybe you'd understand.

I wish for you a deafness. Silence or muffled. It really doesn't matter. I wish for you the struggle I face every single day.

I wish for you a hearing aid. A cochlear implant. A bone-anchored hearing device. I wish for you the tinny, squeaky amplification of I-can-almost-hear-it-but-I've-no-idea-what-it-is. I wish for you technology that's imperfect at its best. I wish for you the scars and pain of things inside your head.

I wish for you the squealing feedback when people give you a hug. I wish for you the dying batteries in the middle of a conversation or a movie or lecture. I wish for you the continual adjustments to make your aids "just right" and the feelings of disappointment when they most often fall short.

I wish for you the extra packs of batteries. The chargers and the cords. The handheld devices that fill your pockets and purse. I wish for you the streamers and mics and FM devices and remotes. I wish for you a theater that actually has been looped so the telecoil in your aids might actually be put to use. I wish for you closed captioning that actually reads like the script. No misspellings, no missed words, and synchs with the actors' lips.

I wish for you the cost of buying and maintaining and repairing and upgrading your devices, and the insurance to cover the bulk. The audiology and surgeon appointments. The dreadful sound booth and beeps you may or may not hear. I wish for you those days you hate when you're told you're doing well. But deep inside you know it's fake. So you smile and walk away.

I wish for you the scaly ear canals from wearing a mold all day. I wish for you the floppy ear and little red sores behind you ear where your processor rubs away. I wish for you the wig tape to hold little things in place. The retainers, the ear hooks, the mic locks. I wish for you the ear wax that clogs your mold and mics. The wax guards and mic protectors and ear gear to keep the gunk at bay. I wish for you the magnet that often leaps away - to the umbrella, the car door, the costume jewelry of your friend while giving a hug, or simply falls to the ground.

I wish for you the exhaustion of trying so hard to hear. The missed conversations when your brain is too tired. I wish for you to ask others to repeat again and again, knowing you may never understand. I wish for you tenacity so that you may never give up.

I wish for you the noisy restaurants, the too-loud background music, the loud conversations at the table across for you. The laughing, the crunching, the dishes clanking, the order taking, the babies crying. I wish for you that earnest desire to decipher the words and understand your dinner companion among the clamorous noise.

I wish for you the rolled eyes and sighs and oh-my-goshes. The it's not that important or forget it when you struggle to hear. The you never listen and pay attention and are you wearing your hearing aid today? You're being ridiculous. You're stronger than that. Quit moping. Get up and join the game. I wish for you that last nevermind that always makes you cry.

I wish for you the chuckles of friends who laugh at your expense. Time and again you ask, "Did you say Amanda or banana or sandwich?" I wish for you those who answer questions directed at you before you get the chance. I wish for you those people who think that you are being rude. Who think that if you'd just paid attention, you'd know just what to do.

I wish for you the mumblers and those who don't speak up. I wish for you the accents and poor enunciation and those who chew gum and eat while talking to you. I wish for you the shaggy beards that hide the lips you read. I wish for you the ones who shout from other rooms or talk as they walk away. I wish for you those who bemoan why you didn't hear. If only you'd been a better listener, you'd know what they had said.

I wish for you understanding. To know how hard it can be. I wish for you patience when I'm slower to respond, or answer, or contribute. I wish you just knew it takes time to hear and understand you.

There's so much more I could wish for you if you were deaf for a day. But most of all, I'd wish for you a world that is kinder than the one that we have now. I'd wish for a place where empathy and lenience and compassion for others' differences were not only evident, but demonstrated without thought, even for those like me. Deaf, hearing, or somewhere in between.

That is my wish for you.

Little Baby Cries

Hearing loss can be a good thing at times. I've reached the point in my life where I can actually find the benefits of it sometimes. Like now. 

At this very moment, my 11-day old grandson has decided that he needs to exercise his stunning vocal cords instead of napping. The new parents are upstairs in their bedroom doing what they can to console him to no avail. Through the closed door, they are little more than vibrations in my hearing devices. I'm resisting the urge to go up and offer my help, knowing that new parents and their infants learn to live together in those struggles.

"Did you hear him last night?" my daughter asks each morning. "He was really fussy."

Honestly, I have to answer no. With my hearing aids out, I am blissfully unaware of virtually everything that happens in the house, especially behind our closed doors. Unless a light is turned on. Lights do wake me.

But little baby cries in the night are not a problem for me. Nor are they at this very moment, as I can simply slip the magnetic coil from its place on my scalp and adjust my hearing aid volume until his cries are nearly negligible. It's rather nice at times that I can disconnect from the noisiness of the day (and night) so that I can attend to other things. Like sleep.

As for my daughter and her husband, they're still in that bleary-eyed, half-exhausted-half-elated new parent stage that many of us have experienced. Tending their baby's cries with love and impatience when they'd rather be napping themselves.

Little baby cries are the blessing and the bane of new parenthood. How wonderful to hear them -- even now.

Uncovered

This week, I am reminded of the time when a man attempted to grope me. I was a young college student. He was a well-respected deacon in my church. That he had been a mentor and helped me acquire funding into my university multiplied my shock and surprise exponentially. I quickly distanced myself from him by removing myself from his presence and by leaving my church, too. I never told anyone out of respect for his daughters, who were my peers and friends. I could never look at them the same way without wondering if they were sexually abused by him, as well. That moment in time is burned into my memory and has shaped my distrust of men in "perceived power" over me. He was not who he pretended to be. And neither was I anymore. The political events of this past week have bared those wounds of shame and disgust that I carefully covered and kept hidden under my veil. The storm inside me was raging.

Amidst our country's political chaos, I came across a few simple words that calmed the storm: "Things are not getting worse; they are getting uncovered."

We live in a world of human fallibility. Our history ebbs and flows as quickly as the tides -- from time to time, periods of perceived goodness rise above the weaknesses and some enjoy prosperity, though others' oppression silently festers under our veils of apathy, blindness, and deafness. We justify our beliefs with feeble words and actions. We seem unable to see the world for what it is like through others' eyes, especially when we are prospering.  It's a song sung throughout our ages.

Today, those tidewaters seem stormy and dark. And the desires of some are washing over us in a tidal wave of discord. Veils are being pulled back and the ugliness of man's moral weakness has been revealed again. Some becry "the good ol' days". While others charge forward. In truth, there never really was such a thing as "the good ol' days." It's only our perception of what was or was not.

In her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood expresses that mindset perfectly as Commander Waterford explains his rationale behind the oppression in his government - "Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some." Those "good ol' days" may have been awesome for some, but it wasn't so great for many others. We pulled back that veil.

When we live our lives under veils, real and perceived, we limit ourselves. We limit our potential. We limit our kindness and generosity. We limit our humanity. We live in guarded awareness that a better world for ourselves and our loved ones often means a world that is worse for others. And we accept that truth for many different reasons as long as it does not upset our own status quo. Some are fighting to maintain that status quo with everything that is in them.

But it has been unveiled. It is revealed, and it cannot be pushed back under the covers. And if we are to survive these dark days, we cannot ignore it and hope it goes away. We must hold each other tight while we continue to pull the veil back and back and back. We must heal our wounds. We must become better people.

It is our deepest apologetic.

Oh, the Chaos

I retired from teaching over a year ago. It's been wonderful for my health. My blood pressure is lower. My weight is steady. My feet and ankles stopped swelling. My legs stopped cramping. I became more relaxed. And busy with the things that interested and engaged me.

I'd been warned to avoid subbing in my district by several friends who'd also retired. But when I read a frantic Facebook post from a friend that her maternity leave sub had canceled at the last moment, I was lulled by my emotional, maternal gut to offer my services. She delivered two days before the start of the school year, and I stepped in before my substitute application was completed to cover her class for the first 6 weeks.

It only took me a few days to regret that decision.

Though my teaching skills had not diminished and I was able to step in as if I'd not even been gone a year, I found myself teaching a grade level I'd not cared much for the last time I'd taught it. I also found myself in an environment that I can only describe as hearing hell.

The school hangs onto that failed 70's experiment called "open concept", which eliminates the walls in traditional classrooms and opens the learning and teaching environment to the noise of all the other classrooms and hallways. Research has proven that the distractions in open concept outweigh any benefits of such an environment. I'm surprised it is still in use.

While I've found that the teaching styles, curriculum, and classroom organization in the school is pretty much exactly like any other school I have taught in, the distractions and the noise are not. Not only are the students highly distracted by what they see and hear in the other classrooms and the hallway, the environment seems to encourage them to add their own noise to the cacophony, which include an excessive amount of chatting and talking, drumming, clicking, and chirping. Yes, chirping. The feeble attempts of teachers to lessen distractions by defining their teaching space with bookcases, marker boards, and other partitions testifies that the open concept is still a problem for learning and teaching, just as it had been when schools began abandoning it in the mid 80's.

What has ensued each day is a chaotic mangling of noise that makes it difficult, and often impossible, to concentrate, listen, hear, and understand. And an increase in both my anxiety and my blood pressure. I am tired, grumpy, and head-achy at the end of each day.

It has set me to pondering again the plight of students who may have an especially hard time hearing or focusing attention in such an environment -- like the little girl I met in the hallway who is deaf in one ear and has a bone-anchored hearing aid. If I have trouble comprehending speech in this school as an adult, what struggles must this child endure each day as well?

I feel like I am the lucky one, though. I will be gone in 2 more weeks.
I am counting the days.

It's a Good Thing

I didn't start this blog because I thought I'd gather a lot of readers. It was mostly a way for me to cope with my sudden hearing loss and find my way in this almost deaf life I've found myself in. Today is the 6th anniversary of that dreadful day canyoubelieveit? Some friends have read my posts from time to time and left kind and supportive comments here and on my Facebook page. Occasionally a stranger makes a comment that lets me know that it is read at times beyond my little place in this world.

Recently, such a person contacted me to let me know that she herself has had hearing loss. She is a teacher and will begin teaching this year. Understandably, she is nervous about what to anticipate as she begins this step in her own almost deaf life. Finding someone who has walked that path before her, she wanted advice on things she could do to make the transition easier and less stressful.

Honestly, it's going to give her a lot of stress, I know. It's not easy. And she will find herself in many situations that she couldn't possibly anticipate. And she will have to find her way. Like I did. Like I still do today.

The thing is, hearing loss is tough. And many of the things one encounters day to day cannot be anticipated until they happen and you find yourself side-stepping, shuffling, fumbling, and adapting. And you do so because you really don't have any other choice if you want to continue living in this world. A sense of humor helps. So does honesty -- and a bit of frankness. If you're having trouble hearing or understanding, you have to speak up and let people know. Or you'll find yourself nodding and smiling that doofus smile. You have to be your own advocate.

I'm better about that now than I used to be. I still get a lot of "never mind" and "it's not that important" and those dismissals still hurt my feelings. But I confess that I've ignored people on occasion and blamed it on my hearing loss. No one is a saint.

I've committed to a long term sub position for several weeks. I'm a little nervous about returning to the classroom. And this one is an open classroom, so the fear of extraneous environmental noise is giving me a little anxiety. But I've learned the fear in the anticipation is usually greater than the reality. So I'll enter this assignment prepared to side-step, shuffle, fumble, and adapt as I have before. I've become resilient that way.

And it's a good thing.

Life

This world is an amazing place. No matter how sorrowful the living may become, life can be found pretty much everywhere we look. One only has to look. It's there. In the cracks of the sidewalk. Buried in the soil. Nesting in a tree. Carried in a womb. The sunrise. A tide. Large and minute. Life pervades. Permeating the darkness and grief with aspiration. Light. And peace.

It's a boy. A son. A grandson. The present. The future. News of hope and anticipation of new life. Parents' pride. Grandparents' joy. A family's progeny.

Life and death. Death, then life. It's a miraculous circle.