5-minute word vom #4: hearing loss

Date: August 21, 2022 
Start time: 4:20 PM 
What I'm thinking about: hearing loss

I just saw an article that showed that researchers have been developing potential forms of gene therapy that can help prevent genetic hearing loss. 

As somebody who has genetic hearing loss (hey friends, fun fact: I'm borderline medically deaf - does that make me eligible for disability benefits...?), this is super exciting news to hear. Although I suppose it should be encouraging on behalf of potential future children I may have, I was more excited for potential future development of this treatment and/or others that might be able to help improve my own hearing. 

As somebody who first failed her hearing exam at 8 years old and who has lived her entire life with moderate to severe hearing loss, the hearing aids that I've been more or less consistently wearing since 2019 have been both a huge improvement to my quality of life but are still annoying to deal with - my ears hurt after wearing them for a long time; I deal with feedback noise on a regular basis; I'm constantly afraid that I will forget backup batteries or that I will leave the aids at home when I'm on my way to an important meeting; so on and so forth. It's definitely been a love/hate relationship with hearing aids (I had my first pair in college, but the microphone was positioned behind my ear, resulting in a lot of noise coming from behind me --- not good when 5'2" and therefore positioned in the front row of a choir. I only wore those during lectures and eventually stopped wearing them altogether. I also had my first traumatizing experience with the financial system when I got charged 2 years' worth of interest in one go on the price of my hearing aids due to not paying off the entirety of the cost within 2 years. Thankfully there was eventually a class-action lawsuit against the bank for not providing sufficient information to its clients several years later, but the amount of stress I experienced in that moment has scarred me to where I am extra careful about reading the fine print when signing up for payment plans and loans -- and try to avoid them as much as possible altogether). I hate being dependent on anything, and being dependent upon these hearing aids causes feelings of frustration, particularly when I have to make sure I have them on, or that I am extra careful with them (particularly when around water). I also hate playing Telephone (that game where you whisper into people's ears and pass a message down a line of folks), maybe for obvious reasons now. Even with hearing aids, it gives me a lot of stress.

On the other hand, there are some benefits of having hearing loss - I sometimes wonder if I don't remember experiencing much bullying as a kid because I couldn't hear the other kids whispering during class. Some "friends" used to have a joke in which they would just whisper my name really loudly until (if) I finally heard and turned around, but asides from that, I was largely unaware of whispers, rumors, if people were saying things in class, which means I was unresponsive -- thereby making me a boring target. I am also blessedly able to sleep through higher amounts of noise than others, since I don't hear a lot of background noise (I didn't realize the extent of this until my first pair of hearing aids, holy cow what a difference!) If there is a screaming baby on the plane, I will still unfortunately hear it, but it will be much softer and less painful to my ears when I take out my hearing aids.  #silverlinings

I ended up rambling a bit longer about this subject, but that's the life of a nearly?half? deaf person.

End time: 4:34 PM