When I see videos of infant children being given the ability to hear for the first time, I'm overjoyed like everyone else. Given that chance in my own experience, I've had mixed feelings.
I wrote elsewhere that I am hard of hearing since birth. I lived in an aural landscape that was varied and rich enough to me, but nowhere near the full set of sounds available to the rest of the planet. I had no sense of the difference; I only knew that I could not hear some things and had trouble understanding some people. I accepted it no more than any person accepts that they can't fly. But it did shape my personality and relationships, causing me to be introverted and independent and others were at least amused by my hearing everything as a mondegreen or at worst frustrated with my constant misunderstandings.
After an ultimatum from my wife - and saving money in my HSA - I got my first pair of hearing aids in the fall of 2019. A world of sounds and understanding immediately became available to me, along with sensory overload. Getting hearing aids is not as simple as turning the volume to 11 and rocking on.
My audiologist, Dr. Tracey Creswell, warned me of as much. She explained that my mind would need to become accustomed to this, and in time I would learn to sort out the sonic assault she unleashed on me. After a few months, she told me, I would start to make sense of all the new information being made available to me. Hearing is as much a neurological phenomenon as it is a physiological one.
Immediately after she put them in my ears for the first time, I could hear a clock ticking. The hiss of the HVAC, undetermined hums, clicks, etc. A taste of what was to come. She told me that I would be bewildered at times and probably the best advice she gave me aside from this warning was to ask people from time time, "what's that noise?" so I could learn. I left for work from her office.
Immediately upon walking outside, I was hit with a manifold increase in new sounds - the hiss of cars on the Taconic State Parkway, the sound of a single leaf skittering across the parking lot, a distant car radio. Getting into the car and turning the ignition I heard the ignition beeps and turn signal clicks for the first time. I had learned about these things and even installed the devices that make them in older cars - but never heard them. I have driven for leagues on highways with a perpetual right hand turn signal before I discovered it.
Then came the first unknown. Something was rattling in the car. Where was it? Was something loose? About to fail? What did this mean? I had no one to ask and I had to pull on into a parking lot to discover it was a small Nerf gun in the plastic cup holder of a door.
Later at work I noticed I could hear noises and indicators that other people had long learned to ignore - the sound of the badge reader accepting my badge (thankfully), or the microwave indicating it is done with it's program. I heard a colleague talking 100' or more, down the hall. The clacking of keyboards - through walls. Distant phones ringing.
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