“God gave my hearing to someone who needed it more than I did, because he knew I would be okay in life without it.” Those words flashed into my mind as I looked back at the things I’ve accomplished since saying them for the first time when I was seven, proving to people that being hard of hearing doesn’t hold me back in life, it pushes me forward. Their faces when I was Salutatorian and made a speech for graduation were speechless. No-I wouldn’t let my hearing ruin my life, it was a blessing if not anything else. Not every moment was good, but I couldn’t expect to know how my life would be. I smiled at myself as I remembered that day, the day my life changed completely.
…
I sat there in a huge gray colored chair, swinging my legs freely back and forth waiting for the doctor to call my name. The room felt big, like a million little kids all seven years old like me, could all play here and not run into each other. I looked around at the art on the wall, they seemed boring. I think one of them looked like a maze, until I asked mommy and she said it was the inside of my ear. No, I’m pretty sure it isn’t, I’ve seen the inside of my ear through the mirror. I haven’t seen anything like that inside my ear yet. That picture must be wrong, or I’m not looking close enough on the inside of my ear.
“Elishya…” a man in a huge white shirt called out.
I didn’t know he called my name until both mommy and daddy stood up from their chairs and started walking towards him. Maybe he was talking really quiet that only mommy and daddy could hear him. Oh well, I jumped off my chair and followed them to the doctor who led us down a really skinny hallway that had a lot of doors. I think like five or six, but I’m not sure and I really don’t care. I’m just trying to hear what everyone is saying. They all seem to be talking so quiet. Before I knew it they all turned and walked through a door at the end of the hallway.
The doctor closed the door and motioned for me to sit at the chair closest to a big desk filled with paperwork and yellow folders. I sat down as mommy and daddy were sitting down in the two chairs straight across from me. The doctor sat at the desk in a comfortable looking chair, turned to me and started talking about why we were at the doctors today.
“I’m going to test your hearing today,” is what he said. At least I think that’s what he said to me before turning back to his desk and pulling out a white piece of paper from one of the many yellow folders. He was writing something on the white paper.“Ok,” I said before he sat down his pen and stood up. He walked to a second door in the room and opened it motioning for me to follow him in the room.
I had to make a step up from the first room into the second. It was a small room, little kids couldn’t run around and play in here like the other room. I liked the other one better. Why was he making me come in here?
I sat down in the chair and he put these really big heavy headphones over my head and my ears. They hurt a little bit because they were so heavy. He handed me a stuffed animal and walked out, closing the door behind him. The room felt too quiet, quieter than I am used to. When I looked away from the door and straight ahead I saw the doctor sit down at his desk and put something over his head, it looked like a microphone that came close to his mouth. In the back I could see mommy and daddy still sitting in their chairs holding hands. They look worried though. What’s going on, why did they bring me to a different type of doctor? I’m not sick; I haven’t been coughing or sneezing, so why are they so worried. I hope this isn’t about the teacher putting me in the corner the other day, I didn’t mean to not listen to her.
“You’re going to hear some beeping sounds in your ear. They won’t sound the same all the time. When you hear it, raise the hand of the ear you hear it in. Can you do that for me,” he asked clearly. I could hear him; I had a smile on my face even though I was really scared. I nodded to his question and everything was silent again.
Beep!! I heard it in my right ear really loud so I rose my right hand really high, I didn’t know if it mattered how high I rose my hand. The doctor saw my hand, looked down briefly and wrote something with his pen on that white paper again. Next it was my left ear, still loud like the last one. But then, my left ear again, only this time it was softer. The tone changed, then the length, but then it started getting really soft. I wasn’t even sure if I was hearing the beeps, so I just kept raising my hand when I thought I heard something. I hope I’m not in trouble for lying. But I really didn’t know if there was a beep or not. It sounded like it, but it was so soft I wasn’t sure. I’ll just tell mommy and daddy I’m sorry, I really did try to hear everything.
“Very good,” the doctor’s voice chimed in over the headphones again. His voice sounded funny after hearing all those beeping sounds, “I’m going to say words to you but I’m going to cover my mouth so you can’t see my lips. Just repeat what you hear okay.”“Cat…dog…snake…cake…hot dog” he said again.
“Cat…dog…bake…cake…lotmog…” I repeated to him without thinking twice about what I was saying. He did say lotmog, I know he did.
After a while of sitting there in the second room all by myself, the doctor finally opened the door and all the sudden the room felt really bright. He came over, took off the headphones and had me follow him out and back into the room with mommy and daddy. I’m not sure what emotions they are showing. They still look worried, but only different now, not like earlier. I sat down in my original chair by the desk and swung my legs again looking at mommy and daddy with a smile on my face. I think they tried to smile back at me, but they aren’t doing a very good job. Why are they acting so weird, why do they look so worried?
The doctor turned in his chair to face mommy and daddy but looked at me also. He pulled the white paper out and explained something about an audiogram. It was a graph with big numbers on the top and little numbers on the side. Something that measures someone’s hearing. The x’s represented one ear, the o’s represented the other ear. Something about a speech banana, this gray spot in the middle of the graph, where “normal” people like mommy and daddy can hear. At least that’s what he said. Then he took his pen and pointed to the x’s and the o’s on the graph, really close to the bottom. Way below the speech banana thing he was talking about a second ago. He stopped talking for a minute while mommy and daddy looked at this paper and looked at each other then back at the paper again.
“I don’t know if you have noticed, but your daughter cannot hear well. She has what we consider a profound hearing loss. In other words, she is hearing impaired. She is gradually losing her hearing and will continue to as she gets older. Right now she is at about a forty percent hearing loss.”
“How is this possible? How can she just lose her hearing all of the sudden after seven years of hearing perfectly and none of us know it,” mommy asked the doctor while holding daddy’s hand.
“I’m not sure,” he responded quickly, “we will need to run some tests to find out how she started losing it. Things like allergies, or hereditary genes could be what are causing the hearing loss. Whatever it is, we’ll find out what’s going on. ”
Nothing made sense to me. What is hearing impaired or profound hearing loss? I just sat there trying to figure out what the doctor meant by everything he was saying. I couldn’t hear mommy or daddy or the doctor talking anymore. I’m not sick, so why are they saying these things. It’s all so confusing! I just want to go home and lay down on the couch with daddy and watch movies or let him read me a picture book like he always does.
Mommy is crying hard now after talking to the doctor, but she stands up anyways, daddy too. They shake the doctors’ hand and tell him thank you. He turns to me, smiles and says he’ll see me again soon. I don’t even think to ask why.
Mommy turns to me and asks me if I understand anything the doctor just said and I had to shake my head really sloppy
“The doctors says you can’t hear things very well. We don’t know why you can’t, but we have to be especially careful to make sure we talk to you clearer. You’ll need to get what’s called a hearing aid, it will help you hear better, but you have to wear them in your ears all the time.”
“Even when I’m sleeping,” I asked boldly, still unaware of what any of this meant.
“No, not when you’re sleeping, just when you are awake. And we have to have more doctor appointments done with different doctors to find out why you can’t hear us.”
“Ok,” was all I could say before I added, “The doctor says I can’t hear right?”
“That’s right,” they both looked at me.
“Well I think God took my hearing because he didn’t think I needed it. So he decided to give it to somebody else that would need it more than me! Don’t you think so,” I stated as if it meant nothing, like my future of being the girl in the family who couldn’t hear would never matter.
…
And until that day, that one day in February it did mean nothing. I sat on the cold metal bleacher looking around at everyone. I could see everyone around me laughing hysterically and talking in deep conversations. The group of people, the party, I came with sat in front and around me talking about something, I couldn’t make it out. The wind was howling at me, deafening the already quiet words and worse I couldn’t read their lips. It was dark out, the race track had turned the lights out in preparation for the oncoming fireworks.. It was tradition that took place on the 20th of February in Lake Havasu, Arizona. Just two days before the big twenty first birthday. Two days, that’s it.
“I should be having the time of my life,” I muttered to myself as I continued looking around. I was there with my mother and her boyfriend on vacation. No work, no class, no homework, no nothing! Just my family, shopping, and Vegas on the big day of course this should be a blast! I looked around once more before walking off the bleachers with tears in my eyes. I could barely see the pathway as I walked by everyone who were drinking and talking.
Moments later my mom walked up to me, and simply hugged me. She knew this was an ongoing battle for me. She could see the pain I tried so hard to hide, yet failed miserably. She looked at me again, the words she spoke I could barely hear.
“That’s it! I’m done! I can’t do this anymore!” I tried not to yell, but I couldn’t contain my anger. I wasn’t mad at her, not directly. It was the situation, the ongoing situation. “How is it that you all know I can’t hear anything you say in situations like this, make jokes and laugh and when you see I’m not laughing, no one bothers to try and tell me what is so funny?” I asked her coldly.“What do you mean you’re done?”
“I’m done, I want to get that damn implant that you all keep bugging me about and the doctors tell me I should get. I’m done fighting this, I’m done being the only one in the family like this. I’m so sick of being left out. Just set the appointment up, I’ll do it. If I don’t like it, well then what difference does it make? I’ll just be completely deaf instead of 90 percent deaf. Just call them when we get home.”
And just like I knew, I “[knew] desire without an object of desire, all mind and violence and nothing felt. [I knew I had] nothing more to think about, like the wind that lashes everything at once” I lashed the words that everyone desired to hear themselves.
For those around me I can see the moment in mind, it must have been “like a page of music, like an upper air, like a momentary color, in which swans were seraphs, were saints, were changing essences. The west wind was the music, the motion, the force, to which the Swans curveted, a will to change.” It was indeed that, because in a moment of anger all I could feel was this “will to change, a necessitous and present way, a presentation, a kind of volatile world [that could no longer be] denied. I couldn’t deny anymore that being deaf wasn’t easy, that it was possible, because no longer could I do it. I absolutely positively without a doubt had to change my life. I could no longer be the successful deaf girl in the family, the person who could prove that nothing is as they seem. I was choosing “how to live and what to do.”
…It all seems to end where it began, the office of an audiologist. Two weeks had passed since the surgery took place. Two weeks of pure pain. The doctor lied to me, I wonder how he could do so. Instead of returning to work in three days I struggled terribly. The slightest movement of my neck shot darts of pain to the back of my ear, where a metal device now lay under my skull. I only had hope. Hope that my imagination of “hearing” would become real and worth the pain, imbalance, and anger that led to this moment to determine the truth if “reality exists in [my] mind.”
“Ok Elishya I’m going to attach the implant magnet and you and only you are going to be able to hear the buzzing sound that takes place,” the audiologist warned, “I cant tell you how to prepare for this sound but it may be painful.”
Bzzzz!!
BZZZZ!!!
My head vibrated lightly at first with each small buzzing sound. I quenched my face; the sound was hurting, pounding against my ears. Like a thousand bees buzzing and humming at the same time in my one little ear. It seemed to last forever before I noticed her lips were moving. She was talking to me, yet there were no sounds. Aside from the “bees” it was dead silent in the room. My parents and my cousin sat nearby watching the computer screen she worked on and watching me closely, their hopes on the line too.
“I need you to listen closely, tell me if a sound you hear is comfortable or to loud based on the number chart,” her lips motioned.
More buzzing and vibrating took place. The grew in strength from loud, louder, to unbearably loud or too soft to be noticed. I called out numbers associated to them. The process continued for over thirty minutes. And then she turned them on…a loud high pitched buzzing continued for at least a minute. She looked my parents and told them to say something to me.
Their mouths motioned the words, “can you hear me?” yet nothing but static sound, more bees buzzing. They tried again, and again yet no sounds no words were heard just…bees and static. Tears swelled in my eyes, hope was fading.
She turned the implant off and asked me to put on my left hearing aid so she could talk to me. While tears streamed down my cheeks I replaced it as she asked. She warned me again she would turn the implant back on. My left side sounded like the normal I had grown accustomed to for fourteen years, while my right side sounded like a constant stream of bees and humming noises. I looked at her waiting, knowing it was coming.
“You need to give it time to process. I know you know this, but your brain needs time to readjust to hearing sounds again. It needs to process what each sound your hearing is. As time goes on you’ll begin to recognize them and they sound like sounds, not humming and buzzing that you hear now. But be patient, give it time and don’t give up hope yet.”
I knew this. I told myself secretly for weeks that it would not work, I expected the worst and here I was, experiencing the worst. I knew it wouldn’t work overnight, yet I had hoped it would. The buzzing continued but began to die down. It became a constant humming sound when all was quiet. But when she or my parents spoke, the buzzing returned.
As the appointment wrapped up she handed me an “identification card” with the make, model, and important information for traveling with my implant. I reached into my purse and pulled out my wallet to place the identification card in a slot amongst other things. Slowly with tears still coming I closed my wallet, pressing hard where the two snaps were in order to snap it closed. Finally one budged and there it was. I was caught off guard. My “fictive hero [became] real!” I looked around the room then looked down at my wallet. I opened it instantly and closed it again. There it was again. Again I repeated the action, only to pull my wallet closer to my implant. Moments later there were tears on everyone’s face as I looked up just bawling. This would be a moment I would never forget. For the first time I truly understood how a snap sounded so powerful and instant. But in these mere seconds of snapping, reality hit me.
In a moment of anger not even six months earlier I chose “how to live and what to do”. I chose to take a risk and created a will to change my life. Now my life would be “transformed again, idly, in way A season changes color to no end.” The simple sound of snapping was music to my ears, followed by the elevator ding, and the most annoying of them all was the blinker in the truck. Thirty minutes had passed and already three sounds had overwhelmed me, and this was just the beginning, the beginning of my life as a hearing person. The beginning of hearing became reality and “reality is the beginning, not the end.”
