not too long ago, I went to the Audiologist to get my yearly
hearing test…as a hearing impaired person, I go once a year to keep
on it…this particular trip didn’t go too well… he mentioned that
I had noticeable hearing loss and was likely to need a cochlear implant
in my good ear…I immediately pick up what this meant…
that in a few years my hearing was going to be so bad even a hearing aid
won’t help me hear… I would be totally deaf…or close to it…
I was, to say the least, shocked… and I was being told something
that mentally, I had been prepared for since my youth, but to hear
it like that shook me… to have it become reality wasn’t something I
emotionally wasn’t ready for…
I spent the next week in trying to accept the new reality that I was facing…
I spent the week deep in study of philosophy and tried not to think
about what my future faced…I wasn’t in denial, I was trying to accept
and absorb this information, not intellectually, but in my heart and
my feelings… it didn’t feel good… and a sense of loss came to me…
see the problem lies in the hearing loss itself… and let me explain…
Helen Keller once said, (she was both blind and deaf) she said,
being blind separates one from things, being deaf separates one
from people…we communicate with sounds, words, language…
and I was being separated from the human beings as the main source of
connection with other people is hearing…as I am not that adept with
verbal speaking anyway, a hearing loss will do that… but I will be dead in
the water in terms of communicating with people…
and I have to process that…will I be able to do my job, even when I
can’t hear? perhaps I might be able to retire before that…, maybe…
I tried my company insurance and they don’t even know what a cochlear
implant is… and implants cost upwards of 25,000 or 30,000 dollars…
I can’t afford that…
now note I am not looking for people to offer up possibilities or suggestions or
throw out encouragements, but I am just writing this as another step
in the acceptance process…this is really for me… to accept that which
I must accept and to overcome that which I must overcome… and in this,
I will do both…and someday, you too will be face with the same choices
I am faced with… it isn’t life or death, but it is about loss and what the future
will bring…
Kropotkin