Teej's Secret Box

This is the first time in ages that I feel so happy being so extremely exhausted.

Being deaf is a very draining experience, when I have to put in such extreme focus on what other people are saying utilizing my meager hearing range through wonderful yet limited hearing aids.

Hearing aids only amplify the sounds to the very limited capable range ears can absorb.  A normal ear could hear from about 20-30 decibels upward to about 135 before it start to become too painful to tolerate.  Hearing loss is measured by the lowest level of decibels an ear can detect.  Many people have mild hearing loss that makes very subtle sounds very hard to hear.  The loss is usually not noticed, and happens due to normal use of the ear.  Moderate hearing loss would start to affect the ability to hear silent voice sounds (such as “s”, “ch”, and the like).  The basic hearing aids would easily solve both hearing loss.  Severe hearing loss is associated with the inability to hear anything softer than nearby loudspeakers.  Profound hearing loss limits you to extremely loud sounds such as a revving jet engine.

Usually by that point, a person would be feeling the sound before they would hear it, especially when the other senses are more attuned to those effects.  After all, the brain is a very elastic computer.  When they do not get any signals from one sense, they would expand the ability to absorb extra signals from the other senses to take over the space that would have gone to waste.  This is why Deaf people notice a lot of things beyond normal hearing people.  They pay close attention to subtle things.  This is why I easily detect flickering CRT monitors with low refresh rates, and vastly prefers LCD flat screen monitors for my computer.  We notice the diming of lights due to device overloads, so some interpret it correctly when the microwave finish their cooking, not needing to hear that “ding.”  Our range of vision is huge, and is sensitive to motion, as we rely on it to notice waving hands of our peers wanting our attention.

Unfortunately, as elastic as our brains are, beyond a certain age, it starts to become quite a bit less elastic.  This is why children have great ease being bilingual, while adults struggle to understand the unique rules that conflicts with their concepts.  Dyslectic children need to learn by memorization instead of phonics, or they will be forever doomed to struggle on reading into their adulthood.  This explains why doctors are keen to provide deaf children with cochlear implants as early as possible — to minimize the window of time the brain would use to start drifting toward the other senses, forever losing the ability to fully interpret the sounds we hear as well as a hearing person would.  To those, it would be just pure confusing static, akin to watching a foreign movie without subtitles, perhaps worse.

Unlike a cochlear implant that is designed to go directly to the nerves, the hearing aid still utilizes the full ear system.  Deafness is usually caused by defects within the ear, instead of the nerves to the brain, giving cochlear implants a huge advantage over hearing aids.  However, I still use hearing aids at this time.  With that choice, in order for me to hear voices and associated sounds, the 50-70 decibels sounds (and beyond) are amplified to above my ear’s lowest limit.

There is a side effect with the use of hearing aids.  The amplification effort worsens my deafness at a much faster pace than a normal person.  Think of the warnings you get for operating in an environment with loud noises.  This is how I am able to hear — by hearing loud noises.

I was born with severe hearing loss — 85 to 95 db at a minimum.  An audiogram taken several years ago noted that my ears are now incapable of hearing below 105 to 115 db.  Eventually, I will have to consider the possibility of cochlear implants as an effort to retain my ability to hear.  However, noting the decline of elasticity of my brain as I age, cochlear implants may not restore my hearing to any reasonable level.

This amplification of sounds is taxing to my ears, especially when there is excessive background noise.  Due to my hearing aids’ single microphone, a single tiny point absorbing, mashing, and focusing sound into a tiny tube out to my eardrum, it is difficult for me to hear sounds in specific direction.  Digital hearing aids have certain tricks that they use to try to get around this limitation, with a variety of successes.

Despite the cheats, I still am dealing with a mash-up of sounds.  Left alone, I am only able to comprehend basic words, with one test pegging my interpretation skills at 20%.  To help me understand people better, I also rely on lip-reading.  However, both combined, I probably can comprehend 40-80% of the words being said right away.

Just as much as my digital hearing aids do, I must cheat.  I try to be aware of the subject, and narrow down to the most logical words that could fit the sounds and the lips movement.  When we first meet, I would assume ahead of time that you would say, “How are you?” or “What’s up?”  But if you say, “Salutation,” I most likely will not understand you.

Familiarity with the person helps in a big way.  The more I am familiar with the person, the easier it is to understand the person’s words.  The way the person speaks also help a lot.  Deep British accent is a huge struggle, causing even the simplest questions to be incomprehensible.  Deep southern drawl is amazingly easy to understand, especially with the lighter-weighted vocabulary (no need to speak in big fancy words, ya know?!)  Polite society tends to follow the same scripts — and those who do not follow it would throw me off badly — Inquiring to a product at a store would usually bring an immediately understandable statement: “We’re sold out.”  However, someone recently chose to say, “It’s all gone.”  That took me a while to actually understand.

Listening, focusing, and understanding the surrounding — on top of trying to take some actions on the information provided is incredibly taxing.  With my energy becoming low, I would become snippy, and have great difficulty remaining polite and respectful toward others.

It does not help when certain people are stubborn to the point of refusing to use the wonderful technology of instant messaging, which makes life so much more normal for me.  It also does not help when certain people also refuse to express key information via e-mails, as certain co-workers are noted to do these days (they seems to have a love of using the telephone, and hunt-n-peck on their keyboards, despite being paid six figures salary to be an programming expert.)

It especially does not help when your close friends steadfast refuse to learn sign language, not even the basic finger-spelling that makes life so much easier for me.  Just the simple act of signing the first letter of a word I’m tripping on would give me a huge advantage in understanding you, and allowing the conversation to flow much further.  If you watch my father sign, it is totally incomprehensible to someone with a strict ASL background.  However, most deaf people usually understand him quite well, despite the heavy use of “homemade” signs.

I beg everyone who knows me to put in the effort to learn how to fingerspell the alphabet.  This way, words I can not pronounce properly, I could spell.  Words I do not understand, you could spell at least the first letter.

* * *

So when my reserves are low, I get tired, cranky, and very unfriendly toward others when they continue to depend on me while ignoring my limitations.  I am already at a point in my life where I am starting to consider putting a requirement that my future girlfriends know at least basic signs and/or have a willingness to meet me halfway by starting to learn sign — a huge limiting factor considering the ignorance of society toward our handicap.  So why am I happy right now, although I am so exhausted that my body hurts?

I had my reunion this weekend, and met so many wonderful old high school friends.  But that is a subject for my next blog posting.

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