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Coping With Hearing Loss:
A Writer's Story
by: Connie Briscoe
Oddly enough, I've come to think that losing my hearing was one of the
best things to ever happened to me, as it led to the publication of my
first novel.
I believe that no matter how tough things get, you can make them better.
I have my parents to thank for that. They never allowed me to think that
I couldn't accomplish something because of my hearing loss. One of my
mother's favorite sayings when I expressed doubt that I could do
something was, "Yes, you can."
I was born with a mild hearing loss but began to lose more of my hearing
when I was a senior in college. One day while sitting in my college
dormitory room reading, I noticed my roommate get up from her bed, go to
the princess telephone in our room, pick it up and start talking. None
of that would have seemed strange, except for one thing: I never heard
the telephone ring! I wondered why I couldn't hear a phone that I could
hear just the day before. But I was too baffled--and embarrassed--to say
anything to my roommate or anyone else.
Late-deafened people can always remember the moment when they first
stopped being able to hear the important things in life like telephones
and doorbells ringing, people talking in the next room, or the
television. It's sort of like remembering where you were when you
learned that President Kennedy had been shot or when you learned about
the terror attack at the World Trade Center.
Unbeknown to me at the time, that was only the beginning of my downward
spiral, as my hearing grew progressively worse But I was young and still
vain enough not to want to buy a hearing aid. I struggled through
college by sitting up front in the classroom, straining to read lips and
asking people to speak up, sometimes again and again.
By the time I entered graduate school, I could no longer put off getting
a hearing aid. By that time, even sitting in front of the classroom
wasn't helping much. I was still vain enough to wait a few months while
I let my hair grow out a bit before taking the plunge but I eventually
bought my first hearing aid. It was a big, clunky thing, but I knew that
would have to be able to hear if I ever wanted to graduate. Soon, my
hair length didn't matter much, as the hearing aids got smaller and
smaller. They also got better and better at picking up sound. The early
aids did little more than make sounds louder evenly across the board.
That doesn't work for those of us with nerve deafness, as we may have
more hearing loss in the higher frequencies than in the lower
frequencies. The newer digital and programmable hearing aids go a long
way toward improving on that. They can be set to match different types
of hearing loss, so you can, say, increase a particular higher frequency
more than the lower ones.
Once I got my hearing aid and was able to hear again, I could focus on
other things that were important to me--like my education, my career and
writing that first novel!
I had long dreamed of writing a novel, but like others kept putting it
off. As I began to lose more and more of my hearing, I thought that
writing a novel would be the perfect hobby for me, as anyone can write
regardless of whether they can hear. I was also determined to prove that
my deafness would not hold me back.
My first novel was published in 1994 and my fifth in the summer of 2005.
Writing turned out to be much more than a hobby, and I've been writing
full-time for more than 10 years. I'm now hard at work on my first
nonfiction work, a photo-essay book to be published by Bulfinch, a
division of Time Warner Books, in 2007. I honestly believe that I would
never have sat down at the computer and banged out that first novel if I
hadn't lost so much of my hearing. Instead, I'd probably still be an
editor somewhere and still dreaming about someday becoming a novelist.
That's why I sometimes think that losing my hearing was one of the best
things that ever happened to me.
About The Author
Connie Briscoe is a New York Times best-selling author with five novels
published. She is currently at work on a photo-essay book to be titled
Jewels. She has coped with a hearing loss her entire life. For more
information about hearing loss and hearing aids visit her site at
www.hearingaidinformer.com. |
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