We can rebuild her

6 March, 2008

Being deaf I can cope with – it’s being wrong that’s the killer

Over the past few months Greg has been telling me that my hearing is getting progressively worse. I argued that it was fine but that no one was getting my attention before they spoke to me. I’ve been going deaf since I was about 25 – although my parents inability to rouse me from a deep sleep or a good book may indicate the the problem was there much earlier.

Anyway – one trip to the audiologist later and it turns out he was right. Which would make me not right, or ‘differently right’ or just plain darn wrong. I was given a pair of 10 channel digital hearing aids to try, and I never thought I’d say the words but I want them. I really really want them.

My first hearing aid was a lovely pink NHS analogue. The word lovely there is used in the ironic sense BTW. It whistled if I turned it up loud enough to hear anything and it gave me a hell of a headache, so after about three weeks it was stuffed back in the box, left in a drawer and I learned to lip read instead. Which is a lot of fun unless you happen to see someone say something you didn’t want to hear…

Since then I’ve muddled along. I even tried out the hearing thingy at the theatre. The bloke at the side of me had been stealing furtive glances at the odd bit of plastic hanging just under my chin and sticking in my ears. Sadly his decision to bellow ‘are you deaf then?’ coincided with the orchestra starting up, causing me to almost fall off my chair. When I took them back they were popped back in a bag and I had this horrible feeling I’d been wearing something that not only made me look a little bit odd, but had been making the previous wearer look a little odd without being wiped afterwards.

I don’t suppose it’s really that interesting to anyone who isn’t deaf but I’m hoping to get them in a few weeks and I’m planning on adding a couple of entries about how I get on with them.

Rachael posted this in Random

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