A first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford.
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“I was adopted by a very nice couple. When I was a baby, they noticed I wasn’t responding to sounds, and they took me to Michael Reese Hospital. They fitted me with hearing aids in my left ear—my left ear was better than my right. My parents decided to send me to a regular school, and I grew up lip-reading. In February of ’97, I lost most of my residual hearing in my left ear. I was pretty much deaf for almost two years. I became very withdrawn. I wasn’t socially active. It was hard. Eight hours a day, I was trying to lip-read everybody at work, and then I’m gonna go out again at night and try to lip-read people?
“Ten years later, I got a second implant. It was a hard decision, because I thought I was doing fine. My dad was like, ‘You’re young, you’re healthy, you have medical insurance, do it.’ I’m glad I did. Because I do get more sounds. When I walk my dog, I can tell where the birds are, I can tell whether there’s a bicycle on my left or my right. In conversations, I don’t have to tilt my head—I can just face them normally.
