Voices
answered all of those questions
easily, but I was never the one
actually in the situation. I was
just answering questions.
But what would happen when I
actually began living it?
A few months ago I woke up
deaf in one ear. I did not pay
much attention to it. It felt like
I had water in my ear, and I assumed that was all it was. As it
got later and later in the day, I
began to hear less and less out
of that ear. It felt more and more
clogged, and I even had to ask
people to talk into my other ear so
I could hear them. Being a child of
a deaf adult, I was skilled in reading lips and sign language, so that
was helpful. The danger did not
start until later in the day. I was
sitting on my bed doing chemistry
homework — and then I fell off of
my bed. I simply lost my balance.
I was not hurt, but when trying to
get up, I was incredibly dizzy.
Fast forward to a few days
later, after a visit to the emergency room. I went to go see a
doctor who told me that my hearing loss was common; however,
it was usually bilateral, or occurs
in both ears, and that my hearing
should come back within a week. I
was put on a heavy dose of medi-
LEAH
KASHAR
HUFFINGTON
03.03.13
cine and sent home.
After about a week the dizziness eventually went away, but
the hearing loss did not. The
medicine helped and I gained
some of my hearing back. After
many hearing tests (or audiograms), MRIs and blood tests,
it was determined that I should
It is really not about what
you can physically hear, it is
about what you can take from
everything that you listen to.”
wait three months, and whatever hearing remaining in my ears
at that time could be assumed
to be permanent.
Here I am, a few months later,
with permanent hearing loss
in one ear. This hearing loss
was mostly in high frequencies,
or high pitches. Consonants,
women’s voices and group conversations became hard to hear
and understand. School became
harder because I couldn’t hear
my teachers. I could no longer
tell where a sound was coming from. For example, if my
cell phone was ringing, I could
tell that it was ringing, but not