I will never forget that morning. January 5th, 2015. It was a Monday and I rolled groggily out of bed, as usual, not eager for the start of another week. I stumbled my way through my morning routine, mentally cursing myself for staying up too late the night before, and making an empty promise to myself that I would go to bed earlier.
Everything seemed fine as I got into my car and began to pull out of the driveway. It was only when I turned on the radio hoping for a quick update of the traffic and weather that I began to sense there was a problem. The problem was that my radio didn't seem to work. I cursed under my breath as I began flipping through the stations and none of them came in. With a sigh of relief, I considered that perhaps my hearing aid batteries were dead, or that I'd forgotten tp put them in at all. Still partially asleep, I found that my hearing aids were indeed in, and I couldn't remember last time I changed the batteries, so I quickly popped new ones in.
That didn't work. My mind was beginning to swirl with confusion and panic over this very odd situation. I opened a new package and put more batteries in thinking it was odd that the other package must have gotten some bad ones. They are costly, and I was irritated. Plus, I was definitely going to be late for work. The new batteries from the freshly opened pack did't work and I mentally made a note not to purchase batteries from that shop anymore.
Then, my mind sparked to full alert as I realized something. Normally, I was able to hear without my hearing aids to a point. But this morning, the world seemed eerily silent. I slowly began to turn the volume of the radio up. Nothing, I turned it up some more and I heard struck immediately panic and fear into my heart. There were obviously people speaking on the raidio, and it was loud enough for me to actually feel my eardrum moving with the pressure of the sound - I heard them speaking, but it sounded like the adults from the Peanuts cartoon. "Good grief, Charlie Brown!"
At that point, I truly began to freak out. I realized that I could not even call a doctor to make an appointment. Frantically I dial-ed my parents' number and turned the phone on speakerphone all the way up. I could feel the ringing noises rhymthically vibrating the phone in my hand. When it stopped, I assumed that someone picked up the phone and began just yelling into the phone (When you can't hear even your own voice, you end up yelling more than you realize).
I was yelling something like "I can't hear I can't hear. I need a doctor's appointment right now!" My father then sent me a text telling me to go to work and that they would call for an appointment and email me. I drove to work that day feeling like I had literally been dropped onto a strange new planet. A planet that I had no idea how to function on. Even the most basic interactions like going to a fast food drive-thru or answering the phone were impossible and painfully awkward.
I remember that the first thing I did when I got to work was send an email to my boss asking her to excuse me from meetings because I didn't seem to be able to hear that day. She probably thought I was joking, crazy, or just didn't want to go to meetings that day. For me, it was as if a giant mute button had been pressed, muting my world and trapping me in isolation. It was a hard and scary day, but the real adventure was just beginning,
I will be sharing more about my first few months as a newly deaf person, including why it happened, how I survived, and eventually learned to function again. I hope that my story will help educate people on how hearing impairment affects people who have it, but those around them and also important coping strategies.