A Story of a Writer Coping With Hearing Loss

 A Story of a Writer Coping With Hearing Loss

Strange as it may seem, I now consider my hearing loss to have been a blessing in disguise, since it prompted me to finally have my first novel published.

In my opinion, there is always a way to improve your situation, no matter how bad it becomes. For that, I am grateful to my parents. They made sure that my hearing disability was never an excuse for me to fail. "Yes, you can." was one of my mom's favorite sayings to use whenever I would question my abilities.

Although I had a little hearing loss from birth, I didn't start to notice a significant decline until my final year of college. As I read in my college dorm room one day, I heard my roommate get out of bed, walk over to the princess phone, and begin talking on the phone. Aside from the fact that I never heard the phone ring, nothing about it would have seemed out of the ordinary. I couldn't understand why, the day before, I could hear a phone ringing. Unfortunately, I was too humiliated and confused to confide in anybody, including my roommate.

Even after a long period of deafness has passed, the inability to hear everyday sounds, such as the doorbell, the next room's conversation, or the television, can be a devastating blow to a person's quality of life. It's like trying to put yourself back in the exact spot where you were when you heard the news of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy or the World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

I had no idea that would be the start of a downhill spiral as my hearing continued to deteriorate. However, I was still narcissistic enough when I was younger to resist purchasing a hearing aid. College was a struggle for me, so I sat at the front of the room, tried to read everyone's lips, and repeatedly asked them to raise their hands.

I finally gave in and got a hearing aid when I started graduate school. Even sitting still in front of the class wasn't making much of a difference at that point. I still had enough vanity to hold off on buying my first hearing aid for a few months while I waited for my hair to grow out a bit. Although it was a large and cumbersome device, I was aware that it was necessary for my hearing to graduate. As the size of my hearing aids shrank, the length of my hair became less important. Their ability to detect sound also improved with time. The primary effect of the first aid was to uniformly increase the volume of all noises. Because some people with nerve deafness have greater difficulty hearing higher frequencies than lower ones, it won't help us. That is further enhanced by the more modern digital and programmable hearing aids. For example, you can adjust them to compensate for a certain kind of hearing loss by amplifying a higher frequency while reducing the volume of lower frequencies.

My education, profession, and the completion of my first novel could once again take center stage after I had my hearing aid and could hear clearly.

I, too, had longed to pen a book, but I, too, had put it off. Writing a book seemed like the ideal pastime for me as my hearing loss progressed because anyone can put pen to paper, regardless of their aural abilities. I was also hell-bent on proving that being deaf wouldn't stop me.

The summer of 2005 saw the publication of my fifth novel, following the 1994 release of my first. For over a decade, I've made a living as a writer after discovering that writing was more than just a pastime. In 2007, Bulfinch, a branch of Time Warner Books, will publish my first nonfiction book—a photo-essay collection—that I am currently working on. If my hearing hadn't been so severely impaired, I truly believe that I never would have sat down to write that first novel. On the contrary, I would most likely be working as an editor someplace, harboring hopes of one day publishing my novels. That's why gone are the days when I count my hearing loss as a blessing in disguise.

No way!

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