I am so deaf today. Although my cold seemed much much better (but I saw the doctor on Tuesday and he told me to stay away from L for a few days, so I haven't seen her yet), at about 11:00 this morning my ears blocked up again. They don't hurt so much as I just can't hear.
So I don't hear so well under normal circumstances, having lost the hearing in my right ear 100% in the big Brain Tumor Extraction of 1991. (But it was a tumor of the acoustic nerve so it was really because of that, and not its removal.) This is not your most typical sort of hearing loss, and most people, even if they know about it, don't know quite what to do with it. I do wear hearing aids, but strange ones: the one on my right ear is just a microphone/transmitter; it picks up sounds and channels it via FM into the hearing aid on my left ear. That way, I can "hear" a little on my right side, enough anyway to know that I have to turn in that direction because someone's talking to me there.
It is amazing, though, the number of people I know, and know for a long long time, who will just whisper into my right ear, or turn away when they're talking to me. (It helps if I can see faces when people are talking to me.) Well, whatever. I don't expect everyone to adjust everything they do for me. (And by the way, you can't even imagine what those theft detection columns in stores sound like when you walk through them with FM radios on your ears.)
And yet there are those who have adapted to my hearing thing so well that I think it's what helped me adapt, too. The first one was J3, who was herself only about 14 when I had the tumor out. She would say something to me and I would ask her to say it again. Then again. On the third try, instead of repeating herself, she did her best Helen Keller impersonation and wiggled her fingers in front of my face like sign language. I was startled for about a second and then we broke up laughing.
If I can't hear something and I say to either of my daughters "I didn't hear you" they reply "What?" It never gets old.
If I am anywhere walking with my Sibs, or either of my two best buddies, Chum and E, we will automatically fall into step so that they are on my left, where I can hear them. If we're already walking and then switch positions en route, we call it The Deaf Dance. They are all skilled at it, along with me. Chum and E also sit down at restaurant tables so that I'll be sitting where I can hear them. And get this: on every ride at DisneyWorld, Sibs will, without a second thought, sit on my left, even if we were on line the other way cause we were facing in another direction.
When the good ear went today (it's probably an inner ear infection and I need to take a week of Prednisone; it's happened before, not a big deal) I told Colleague and the SCM, since I work pretty closely with them. She is generally very soft-spoken; I think her allergies/asthma just make it hard for her to project her voice. So we do become an interesting team. As for the SCM, I think that a) he can't see something unless it's happening to him, and b) since a hearing loss doesn't show, he just doesn't get it. He kept trying to talk to me all afternoon, and each time I would remind him that I couldn't hear him.
I do hear some sound. For example, I would hear a ringing and look up at him. He would look at me as if to say "Aren't you going to answer the phone?" I had to tell him -- twice -- that I could hear the ringing, but couldn't tell if it was the phone or the fax, both right behind me.
Here's what it sounds like today: imagine a really big, soft, stuffed pillow. And the pillow is wrapped around your head, tight against your ears. So all the sound is blocked out and muffled. Now imagine that the pillow is stuffed with water, so what little you do hear sounds like it's coming through water. Now imagine that the only thing you hear loud and clear are the noises inside your head, the hum and sort of glow-sound that comes from something called tinnitus, which is pretty sucky, and I don't even have it bad. So that's what it sounds like for me today. My own voice sounds distorted, too.
I'm not complaining, mind you. Well, of course I am, but not in a a complaining way. I mean, it's annoying, but either it'll go away on its own tomorrow (sometimes it does) or I'll get the prednisone. But I have an appointment for a haircut and a facial tommorrow, and really, what's more important? It's probably easier to get an appointment with the doctor than with the facial girl. So we know my priorities are straight. A facial does feel so so good.
On another note, I started looking at my stats to see how I've been googled, since I always read in other people's diaries that they get googled for all kinds of amusing and often obscene combinations of words. Well, now it's official: I'm boring. I have yet to be googled (or excited or yahooed) for a single thing that I would ever google or excite or yahoo someone for myself. I've got to start pepping up these diary entries.
On another note, I'm dying of curiousity to know who the college student in Washington DC is who's reading my diary. So drop me a guestbook note, okay?
On another note, an adult walked into one of the boys' rooms at school yesterday and encountered a young gentleman and a young lady in one of the stalls engaged in some serious sexual activity. (Maybe that'll help my google quest.) Yes, it's terrible, but in truth it has never happened before in my school, so at least that's something. (There were two staff members about twenty years ago ... but I digress.) So anyway, here's my favorite reaction to this today: one of the counselors at school said at a meeting, which I attended, that there was clearly something wrong when these kids found that sort of behavior more reinforcing than what school provides them.
So wait: is he saying that now we've got to find a way to make algebra better than sex? Good luck with that one!
The holiday approaches. Passover, my out-an-out favorite holiday as a kid, isn't the same since my grandfather passed away in 1971, so it's not one I keep, except in the fondest of my memories. We'll be heading south on Sunday for Easter with Hubs' family, so that should be nice. If you know New Jersey, you know that everyone over 70 lives in a retirement community at the shore, and that everyone else in New Jersey spends every holiday on the Garden State Parkway going to or from the retirement communities at the shore where all the old people live. I once suggested to Hubs that we visit his mother on Mother's Day, and an hour-and-a-half each way trip stretched into about four hours each way. I know better now.
Anyway, R is already home and K is coming by train Saturday morning, the house is already in disarray and we keep running out of toilet paper. On the upside, I got to go to a mall after work today with a daughter, and damn, when they're good, they're good, so that was lots of fun.
Good holidays to all.
43dF
--------------------------------------------------
I'm watching The Simpsons
--------------------------------------------------
last ::
next
Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
A Message From Our Sponsor - 12.16.2006
|
