My Favorite Ear

I never thought about favoring one ear over another, but I totally do....and unfortunately, my favorite ear is [was] my left ear. David rightly pointed out that that probably stems from the fact that I'm left handed. I answer my phone with my left hand and automatically hold it up to my left ear. David sleeps on my left side, so I use my left ear to hear him when we talk before bedtime. I tend to sleep on my right side, so my left ear is the one that is exposed to listen for baby cries during the night. Take away my ability to hear out of my left ear and it makes for an interesting world. Since I have this [hopefully temporary] insight into the world of the hearing-impaired, I thought I'd share a few observations:

Deafness does not mean silence. Maybe that's true for people who are completely and 100% deaf. But what deafness really means is noise; indiscernible, crackling, buzzing strings of static noise. When your ear can't hear sounds and words in their proper way, your ear produces noise anyway. There's always a constant roar of white noise in my ear....which makes hearing out of my right ear more difficult, because I have to filter out the static to understand the words people are saying to me. Crowded spaces are the absolute worst because my ear cannot filter out one noise from the other. I took Zara to Story Time at the Provo Library this week and it was 25 minutes of pure auditory torture. Though the storytellers wore microphones, I only heard about 50% of what they said, because every toddler shriek, every baby cry resonated just as loudly in my ear as did the main speakers. Normally, those background noises are filtered out, but hearing loss prevents that from happening as successfully as it should. It can be an extremely disorienting experience.

Volume is not always the solution to communication. Generally, I can hear people fine if they speak in their normal "indoor voice;" the real trouble is speed and enunciation. Speaking a little louder certainly helps, but I find that speaking clearly and deliberately makes the biggest difference.

Listening is a skill which not many people possess. I know this because I have not always been a great listener. I am a woman, therefore I multi-task. And listening was a job to be done in tandem with some other task: washing the dishes, folding the laundry, reading a book. But when you have only one ear to hear, you stop to listen. Mostly, because you're just grateful that you still can, but because listening--truly listening--involves more than just hearing. It involves looking. It involves contact. I find that I understand what is being said to me so much better when I actually watch a person speak to me. It's not just about hearing them better either. Sure, it helps to watch their mouth as they talk, but when I can truly connect with a person, I understand not just their words, but their tone, their body language, their emotions.

The good news is that I do feel that my hearing has improved somewhat in the last week. It's not as drastic a change as I had hoped for, but I can at least hear words out of my left ear now, and not just muffled Charlie Brown sounds. Sometimes I don't even notice the constant static in my ear, but other times it's beyond frustrating. The first week of my hearing loss, I slept really really well. (And thankfully Zara did too because I probably wouldn't have heard her even if she had woken up in the middle of the night.) A muffled world brings a great quietness at night which I found very comforting to sleep in. But the medication I've been taking since Monday causes insomnia so the last few nights have not gone well. (But I am getting a lot of reading done in the wee hours of the morning.)

The other perk or downside (take your pick) is that I did have to completely wean Zara of breastfeeding this week. I'd already weaned her of her daytime and pre-bedtime feedings, but I was still nursing her if she woke up in the middle of the night (for comfort) or first thing in the morning. I knew it really wasn't necessary to continue to nurse her, but since I was still willing and Zara was still interested, I just kept doing it. Even though my medication may not harm her, I really didn't want to take a chance because it does pass through the breast milk. She hasn't had breast milk since Tuesday and I'm pleased to say that she's doing just fine. Yesterday was the first day that she really seemed aggravated that she couldn't have any, but she seems to be content with lots of hugs and a sippy cup full of juice. I really didn't think Zara would ever willingly wean herself, so I'm grateful that she's taken this so well. There are all sorts of small miracles at work. I'm still holding out hope that there's a big one in store for my hearing as well.