Many people who meet me are completely unaware that I have a hearing and a vision loss. Some may notice one, but not the other. I had a neighbor of my parents who had known me for seven years and did not even know and was shocked when I told him. Looks are deceiving. Though I am not trying to hide my disability, just survive in a critical world.
How do I actually hear? Stating a percentage of a hearing loss does not give you the insight of a hearing loss. Neither does an audiogram, although it is a better picture than a percentage. Extremely low tones I start at a 30db (decibels) loss, extremely high frequencies I have about an 80db loss. 30db is just starting to be a moderate loss where 80db is definitely a severe loss. What does this mean? When dad yelled with his low voice, I heard. When mom yelled at her higher pitched voice, she thought I was ignoring her. I couldn't hear her. Low frequencies I have a moderate hearing loss, at high frequencies, I have a severe loss. Losses can be mild to profoundly deaf.
When I was a child, I loved music. I heard the low tones, but as the flute would get higher, it would get softer and as it went higher it would fade. At least for me it did. How I hear is like hearing bass all the time and the treble turned softer. When someone turns the bass on the radio, it is too much since it is double bass for me. If you wanted to balance the tones for me, you would have to turn the volume up for higher tones (treble) 50 times higher to even out the frequencies with the lower tone.
So what does this all mean in real life? What it means is when higher frequencies are taken out of the spectrum of hearing, you are not hearing a balanced tone. When listening to someone talk, you are not hearing a balanced speech. The higher frequencies enable a person to listen to someone in a balance manner when background noises occur. This means that someone with a high frequency hearing loss is going to have issues hearing someone sitting right in front of them, even though the noise is in the next room. Lower tones always compete and drown out the higher tones. So if someone is vacuuming in the next room and is a lower frequency than the person talking right in front of you. The person with the hearing loss is going to hear the vacuum cleaner better than the voice sitting three feet in front of them. You would think that hearing aids could compensate for this, but in fact, it makes it worse. Technology tries to balance the frequencies, but a loss is a loss. Artificial hearing can only do so much to make up for the damaged hairs in the cochlear in someone's ear. Damage hairs is a neurological loss, for which I have this type of loss.
It takes time to get use to hearing aids, I've been wearing hearing aids since I was in second grade. I have thirty eight years learning how to use hearing aids. The younger you are to learn how to adjust to hearing aids, the better. This is why you see so many people who have a hearing loss at a later age, not adjusting to hearing aids very well. They are a hard tool to adjust to and can be quite overwhelming.
So, what about the vision? How do I see? Since birth, my sight has been a fluctuating change. I started out legally blind, then with contacts improved to 20/30 in my right eye and 20/40 in my left. Then through a long history of surgeries, one cataract at age 13 and three retina detachments that lead to total blindness in my right eye at age 17. My vision in my left eye stayed 20/40 for years until a cataract developed in that eye and I went legally blind. Due to being a high risk, doctors said to wait as long as you could before having the surgery. I was legally blind for one and a half years. I feared that I was only going to see as well as my last cataract surgery. It left me with barely reading regular print. The biggest fear was will history repeat itself and will I be blind for the rest of my life? The fear was immense.
After going to 10 different opinions, I opt for the surgery. My sight was restored to 20/50. I felt so blessed. Especially to be able to drive again. For 9 years my eye did very well, until something very strange happened. Some extreme light sensitivity that everything was extremely bright. This happened April of 2006. For one and a half months I could not drive or keep my eyes open. Through many doctors and specialists we never found out what happened and it finally went away. In the meantime, my right eye, with no vision, started to build pressure. The pain was so tense I couldn't sleep at night. In July of 2007, I had the eye removed. My other eye still started to deteriorate where it got harder to see at night. By the end of 2007, my vision in my left eye has dropped to about 20/60 on good days and 20/70 on bad days. DMV informed me that I could only drive before sunset and after sunrise. No more night driving. Most people think that isn't that big of an issue. Have it taken away and you will realize how much you do depend on your night driving.
Having only one eye to see, I have monocular vision. This means I have no depth perception. Moving objects are a challenge. When driving, I notice the two dimensional space of the end of my hood to the bumper of the car in front of me getting shorter. This is how I tell they are stopped, along with brake lights. This is how I judge when putting my own brakes on to slow down or stop.
My eye also has a lot of deterioration in the retina, which causes floaters. They are like floating ribbons in the sky, sometimes floating right in my center of vision. This is challenging when trying to read, because I have to look away, then look back about every other sentence when reading regular print. I also have graininess as objects are not as smooth as they use to be. This also means recognition of faces is also more difficult and nearly impossible with a window that disrupts the even flow of light, bad lighting, shaded areas, etc. Even the subtle expressions or facial cues are difficult to detect at an average distance. I must get up close to a person, where for some, this is invading personal space. All I can do is smile.
My physical eye itself is 30% larger than the average person. Then take a retina and stretch it over that space. It is like taking a picture and stretching it over that area, the picture becomes a bit distorted. Because my eye has been large all my life, I have adjusted to seeing this way as normal, but to anyone else it would most likely look freaky. My eye ball not only is larger, but elongated as well. Harder for light to travel into my eye and hit the back of the retina. This is why I have light issues and adjusting to dark areas. There isn't enough light to hit way back to the retina in areas that are not well lit. On the contrast, areas that are too well lit is too intense and hard for me to see. Even unlit hallways are difficult and I certainly do not see faces passing through these dark areas. People assume I know who they are. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't.
So what happens when you put my vision and my hearing together? A constant strain of trying to communicate with people. Think of a patchy television screen with lousy speakers that are hard to hear the speech. After awhile, you get tired of trying to "fight" the TV and give up. This is my daily life, day in and day out.
Some poeple will argue that I have assistive technology. I'm grateful for this equipment, but nothing will ever replace the eyes or the ears. This is all artificial.
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