Blessed When I Hear You, Blessed When I Don't

It occurred to me, when e-mailing a friend the other day, that I haven't yet posted on my blog my "hearing history" - how I came to be a HOH/Late Deafened and sometimes dizzy spin guru.

I've always had some trouble with my right ear, since I was a young child (about 9 or 10). It developed a lot of tinnitus (ringing), and progressively became almost useless for hearing. Nobody back then knew what it was; my doctor just called it "early deafness".

The good news then, of course, was I had one perfectly good ear, so although the tinnitus was maddening (I eventually learned to ignore it), I wasn't seriously impaired, and had no problems communicating.
This situation lasted most of my adult life, until December 2005, when I started having periodic severe dizzy spells (not faintness, dizzy like if you just got off the tilt-a-whirl ride). I eventually saw an ENT doc (ear, nose throat specialist), who listened to my history and my current symptoms, and said "You have a classic case of Meniere's syndrome."

Huh? (never heard of it before) Well the long and short of it is it's an inner ear fluid imbalance (as far as they know), and the prognosis is periodic bouts of declining hearing, eventually leading to functional deafness in many cases. The dizzies are also related to the fluid imbalance (since the gizmo that keeps you upright is part of the inner ear).

The good news is that the doctor has managed to bring my dizzies under control fairly well with a diuretic (water pill) that he says I'll probably need to be on all my life.

The hearing in my left ear is a different story, and for the last couple years, it's been declining in waves of bad days and good days, with the bad days slowly eating away the quality of the good days. I'm not using a hearing aid yet, but I do sometimes need an assistive listening device (a little hand-held amplifier with earbuds), and I also use an amplified phone both at home and at work.

On my worst days, even the amplifiers don't work for me, so I feel really blessed that I live in an age of alternative communications - e-mail, instant messaging, cell phone text messaging, chat services, and voice-relay services where an operator translates typed text to voice & vice-versa for phone calls.

I also feel blessed because my dizzies (even though under better control, they still occur from time to time) eventually brought me to the decision to surrender the car keys for good. I no longer drive - and yes, Virginia, it's a blessing! [Side note: Plan on being likewise blessed in the not too distant future - the madness can't continue forever.]

Not driving means: 1) I never get high blood pressure from a traffic jam. 2) I can get anywhere I need to be from anywhere I am because I *had* to learn how. Need makes for quick learning. 3) I never feel "hopelessly stuck" anymore (because my car broke down, or whatever), owing to #2. 4) If you add up your car payments, insurance, gas, license, and repair bills, I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much better my cash-flow situation has gotten (mega-debt not withstanding). 5) Though I'm no athletic prize winner, and God help you find my pecks or gluts :), I have a lot more stamina these days because I do lots of healthy *walking*.

Real blessings can come in funny looking packages.

- LifeWrecked