I can hear you now!

WOOHOO, I can hear you now!!! Spending 10 days in the land of the semi hearing is not an enjoyable feeling whatsoever. You see, I've got a mild hearing loss and wear hearing aids to help to get it to full power. Some people confuse having a hearing loss with being deaf. To explain it to children, I say that just like how some people wear glasses, some people wear hearing aids to help them hear better.

The major difference between glasses and hearing aids would be the insane cost for them. Ontario government will pitch in 500/aid every 3 years and your employee might be nice enough to chip in some too. Mine are probably about 5 years old and slowly dying. I had to get them in prior to the warranty running out or else I'd have to buy a new pair sooner than later and be a bit more broke.

Being one hearing aid short was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. For years, I only used one. The last 2 years, I've been using 2 and became quite comfortable with that. Spending 10 days without one, meeting new people, working, etc was not so much fun at all. It was a gentle reminder that I do have a disability and could face a potential future of struggling with it daily. On days when one feels invincible, it was a reminder that one is not.

My other one needs to go in too, but I've got a series of presentations coming up. Hard to be semi deaf when you're presenting to a room of 200 people. Well I could do it, it'd be one damn huge struggle. Two years ago, I went two weeks with nothing and pretty much just faked my way through the experience.

So if you've had the (dis)pleasure of hanging out with me over the last couple of weeks and I seemed a bit off, now you know why. For this week, I can hear you now. Next week, it'll be another week of just smiling and nodding along. :)