The Epic Otic Odyssey - Day Two

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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The Epic Otic Odyssey - Day One

Day One

I walk into my apartment.  A quiet but persistent siren greets me and my brain rolodex goes on alert: neighbour’s smoke alarm, phone malfunction, alien invasion. I walk carefully towards the source, steps echoing on the kitchen tile before I crouch before the fridge.  Preparing to attack the beast within I grab hold of the door and stop: there is no beast within, the appliance has just turned on.

I sit at my desk, turn on the laptop and try to write. The words don’t come. Instead a low static hum burrows into me as if someone next door left the radio slightly off channel. Fear reemerges: tinnitus. I could easily buy into this except I haven’t drunk red wine or indulged in any other of my allergens. I lean towards the sound and discover it is the droning of the computer’s subversive heart.

Two hours ago, I purchased my first hearing aid and now I am being inundated with noise. Not sound, not music to my ears, but the tinny, whinny, roaring of everyday sounds. Sounds that I haven’t heard in years and normal hearing people have learned to tune out. Sounds that have no business in my head but are there, regardless, wrecking havoc with my sanity.

As I write a steady tick appears as if a bomb might go off and I glare at the once inconspicuous alarm clock. They say I will get used to it but right now I am dreaming of the golden era of silence. Do I really need to hear what others say? Cant people just speak louder? Why should I have to hear what they no longer hear?

Stay tuned for Day Two of the Epic Otic Odyssey…

Disclaimer: I realize I write this Epic Otic Odyssey from a privileged place. Not everyone has enough extra cash to buy a hearing aid and truly, it’s a quasi-luxury for me, not a necessity. I first started writing about it as a way to cope with the feelings of frustration and irritation. It wasn’t in my plans to publish my thoughts, I just needed a place to vent. But as wrote I began to question more than whether I should or should not buy an aid. I began to ponder what it actually means to be vulnerable in a way that other people may not relate or even understand… and why do I feel the need to fix that vulnerability?

If you like this blog, please "like" my FaceBook page and get notices on your timeline when a new article or poem is posted. You can also "follow me" by signing up on the right side of this page.