Introduction Time
So the whole point of this post is to introduce the blog and what I'm going to be writing about. I wanted to do this blog to give family and friends a chance to know how things are going. I get a lot of questions and since I don't really use the phone anymore this seemed like the best way to keep everyone up to date. Also I think blogging about it will help get everything out there, well at least out of my head. Let's tackle the title first, shall we. The title is living in a world going silent, the reason for it is that recently I lost a lot of my hearing.
Time to tackle a really big question: what happened? To be completely honest I don't know. I woke up one day and I could barely hear anything. You would think a day like would be amazingly eventful right, yeah not so much. I got up and at first didn't really notice that much of a difference. The first time I really noticed was when I stepped into our bedroom. I came out a few minutes late to an annoyed husband. Alex asked me, "Didn't you hear me calling your name?" I shook my head no, I hadn't heard anything. I did notice I was having difficulty making out what he was saying. I shrugged it off and we headed to the pool. After swimming for a while I remember getting out of the water and noticing how quiet everything was.
It wasn't long before Alex noticed something was off. He kept complaining when I asked him to repeat himself over and over again. He made me get an appointment with an audiologist for that Wednesday. I was a little nervous going into see the audiologist. The audiologist ran a comprehensive hearing test. I remember sitting in the chair starting to worry. I could see the audiologist flipping the switch and it felt like an eternity before I could hear the sound. The audiologist suggested drops and using something to remove a serious buildup of ear wax. He said that until my ear was completely clean there was no way to get an accurate hearing test.
We went home and gave the ear drops a go. When we went back in, I was worried. The audiologist gave my ears a look and gave the all clear for another hearing test. He ran the comprehensive hearing test again. I knew at times how loud the sound must have been by the pained look on Alex's face. It was clear that something was wrong by the look on the audiologist's face. He then ran a bone conduction test, which sends the sound straight through the bones behind my ear. This test is used to determine if the problem is with the inner ear or the middle ear.
The bone conduction test was almost identical to the comprehensive test. The audiologist told me the news, I had auditory nerve damage. He said there was no real way to know what had caused it. He said that I had severe hearing loss and would need hearing aids. That was one of those moments in life where you feel like the entire world has frozen.
So now I'm learning to deal with my hearing loss. For the most part I have a positive attitude. I know that there is no known way to bring my hearing back (no hearing aids don't make you hear again). So I feel no need to dwell on it. I want to focus on what I CAN do not what I CAN'T hear! I'm also learning ASL and lip reading but more about all of that another day. So this blog is just going to be about hearing loss and living with it, basically how my life is going. It's intended for family and friends. I'll try to post semi often, maybe once a week or so.
