Day Two
I stick the hearing aid in before driving to work. It feels like cotton batting. It feels like it is plugging my ear rather than enhancing its function. It feels like I have been duped out of $2800. Regardless, I am giving it a try. I have a three month money back guarantee: in 90 days, either me or the hearing aid company will be poorer for the experience.
On the freeway, CBC’s Steven Quinn competes with the heat fan and the tires racing along asphalt. It’s a fool’s competition. All I hear is a muffled roar, an indiscernible sonic wave of chaos. I up the volume and chaos enters the terrain beyond hell. I turn everything off and freeze my way into work.
Sitting at my desk I make a conscious effort to relax into the experience. After an hour it begins to feel like I am settling into to the cotton batting sensation. Even better, the hearing aspect of this experience is beginning to feel normal. Maybe this wont be so bad after all. I take the aid off to show a colleague and see the battery gate is open. The device wasn’t even on.
With gate closed I am once again assaulted by noise. The computer, street traffic, the overhead lights and worse, the sound my collar makes every time it brushes against my hair is overwhelming. I feel like crying. All my senses are on high alert. My skin crawls, my eyes are itchy, my underwear pinches in places where it shouldn’t be and the wall clock is TOO DAMN LOUD! How does anybody work in this office? I turn down the volume of the aid one notch and then another. Feeling empowered I go down three notches more. I know who’s boss.
Stay tuned for Day Three of the Epic Otic Odyssey…
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