It took me a while to get the title right because it’s a disability I am truly learning to live my life with each day. There are days when I forget my deafness, there are days when others don’t notice my deafness and there are those days when I long to regain my 100% hearing again.
To listen to music crystal clear, to follow conversations in groups, to enjoy the nuances of the language like I once used to.There are those odd moments of loss.
How much a disability affects one’s life depends entirely on how much one allows it to. I don’t think it’s just about accepting it. It’s more about focussing on what one can do with this challenge. And there are always going to be moments of sheer frustration and helplessness. I don’t hear the alarm clock ring and oversleep, I miss the doorbells many a time and rely on my cat to look towards the door and then to me as an indicator. I am poor in balance. I miss birdsong and even thunder.There is the tinnitus and the eye fatigue due to constant lip reading. I could go on an on.
I use hearing aids which do not function the way spectacles do (I need to write this here because everyone I know has this misconception). I need to take care of them every day, clean them and dehumidify them and keep them protected, change their batteries and make frequent visits to my audiologist for fine tuning. I have no problem telling people I am profoundly deaf but I have a problem with people assuming they need to shout and speak because I am deaf. Loudness impairs the clarity even further,it amplifies sound adding to the cacophony. All I need is clarity.
On the optimistic side, I don’t hear a thing once I have taken my hearing aids off. I sleep through fireworks and arguments. I'm also blessed to live in the digital age so I use a digital hearing aid that connects to my phone and through Bluetooth, music streams in for clear hearing. Same applies for telephone calls.
As I blog this,my hearing loss is at a 105 decibel loss already. Learning to live a fulfilled life with whatever hearing I have is my thought for the moment :-)
