It's My Life

Being deaf, along with many other things, has its advantages and its disadvantages.
I can literally "tune out".
I sleep in peace every single night.
Loud music does not hurt my eyes.

However, if a fire alarm goes off during sleep or a shower, I am sort of screwed if someone does not save me. 
I can be the brunt of jokes.
It can be hard to follow a conversation in a loud area.

Despite all of this, I would never give up being deaf for anything. It is my life, and has become an essential aspect of who I am and how I got here.

I would like to give a shoutout to Sam Anderson, in her blog They Just Say It Better, in the link http://theyjustsayitbetter.blogspot.com.  This blog takes songs and describes them in order to bring a light to someone's day.  I really like what she did here in this blog, and it is what I hope to do with my life. I would hope that I can do what Sam did each week in her blog, and bring meaning to someone's life with everyone that I interact with.

Silence

Silence.
A world of nothing.
It's a sea of faces,
Lips moving, but no sound erupting.
My head turns round and round,
Trying to make sense of it all.
The silence is so loud, it's deafening.
I snap my fingers by my ears, 
Desperately trying to grasp any whisper at all.

Looking at the doctor,
She puts a contraption in my ear.
I sit there, confused.
She begins to fiddle on the computer.
Suddenly, soft sounds begin to fill my ears.
The radiator running,
The rain on the roof,
And I am amazed.

I walk down the street,
Head held high.
Suddenly all the lips moving have meaning.
I raise my hands to the sky,
Proclaiming "Thank You God For Sound."

How far is too far?

Most days, I am in a good mood, and do not have much that can bring me down.
Many people often times do not know if they can ask about my cochlear implant, because with some people, it is a sensitive subject.
I have found that if I lightly joke about my deafness, it makes people feel a lot more at ease about asking me about it.
What can feel a little bit offensive is when people get too comfortable with it, and make fun of it every second.  When this happens, it just causes me to become quiet and withdrawn, knowing that anything else I say will only become fuel for them.
Sometimes, I get the guts to say that they went too far.  But most times, I can not do this.
Many of my closer friends will be in my defense, and stand up for me.
This is something I need to learn to be able to do for myself.
I love answering peoples' questions about my life as a deaf kid, and will gladly answer them.

Swimming Situations

One of my favorite things to do is go swimming with my friends, whether it is at the pool or the beach.  When I was in eight grade, I had a group of friends that consisted of about eight of us total.  We would go to the community pool every day of the summer, because that is just what you did back then if you were "cool".
Well, I desperately wanted to be cool, so I would go to hang out with these so-called friends every day.  I emphasize the "so-called" friends, as they were very inconsiderate to my hearing.
It was very hard work to stay connected with the conversation.  They did not do a good job of allowing me to see their mouths at all times to know what they were speaking.  If I would ask for them to repeat what they had just said, they would shrug it off, saying "Oh, do not worry about it, it was not important," when in fact I had missed an entire story that was relevant to what the new topic of conversation was.
I do not hang out with those girls anymore.  The friends I have now are extremely considerate of my feelings, and do an excellent job of helping me stay in tune with the conversation.

I do not mean to describe myself to be overly sensitive about it, as I am not. But many people need to learn when enough is enough when it comes to teasing me.  I tease myself often, and I find it funny.  But it is often a much different story when others attempt to tease me.

What do people ask me?

Were you born that way?
I was born profoundly deaf in both ears.

Can you hear out of your left ear?
I technically cannot hear out of either ear. However, the microphone located on my cochlear implant in my right ear catches some noise that comes to my left ear.  It can be funny when people try to whisper into my left ear, and all I feel is their breath going on my ear.

Do you sleep with your cochlear implant on?
I do not, lots of peace and quiet!!

How do you wake up?
My alarm does not make noise, but rather, I have a buzzer under my pillow that goes off.

"I Just Can't Be Mad at You for That"

Playing soccer on my college soccer team has many funny aspects due to my hearing.  One particular episode happened a few weeks ago during practice.  We were playing in a small scrimmage, and I was playing at the right back position.  The ball swings along the back line, and I was the last to receive it, and made a pass to a girl open in the middle of the field.  My coach immediately yells, "STOP!!!" I freeze, wondering what on earth I had done wrong.  He says to me, "Z, did you hear Hannah?" I said, "No, I didn't." The whole team laughs, and Coach himself ends up laughing.  Apparently, Hannah, when she passed me the ball, told me to turn to the outside and pass to a player out there.  I had done the complete opposite thing. After practice, Coach comes up to me laughing, and he is like, "I am sorry, I just couldn't be mad at you about that."  I'd say being deaf comes in handy once in a while, and can produce a much needed laugh.

What is it like?

Many people wonder what it is like to hear with a cochlear implant.  It is very difficult to explain because my interpretation of sound is different from yours.  The way you describe the way a dog barks or what dripping water sounds like.  My music sounds different from yours.  I cannot pick out specific instruments out well.  I am also tone-deaf.  My theory for this is that I sing what I think the music sounds like.  To me, I sound like I have a good voice, because I am matching what I hear.  However, to everyone else, my voice sounds off key, because what I hear is off key.
This is a very difficult topic to explain to others.
The following link is a website that gives examples of different levels of cochlear implants and what voices and music sounds like to them.
What does hearing with a cochlear implant sound like?

This cochlear implant looks much like the one I received at the age of two.  It did not wrap around my ear, but rather was a long cord that extended to a processor wrapped around my waist.  As I was too young to process when the battery would die, it would beep to alert my parents that my battery needed changing.  After I received my cochlear implant, I endured years of speech and hearing therapy.  My nerves had been dead for so long that my brain needed to learn how to hear.

What exactly is a cochlear implant?

This video, found on Youtube, demonstrates how a cochlear implant works.  The company that made this video, Advanced Bionics, is actually the exact place where my cochlear implant was made.

In The Beginning...

I was the first child of my family, a prized trophy to behold.  Everything was perfect about me, except for one thing.
At nine months old, my cousin and I, two weeks apart, were playing together.  Our names were called.  Katie looks up, I did not.  I continued to play with my toys as if nothing happened.  My name was called again. Once again, I did not respond.  
My parents were stricken.  For months, they went from doctor to doctor, trying to figure out what went wrong.  I tried several things, from hearing aids to tubes in my ears.  None of these techniques worked.  
Finally, I was taken to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.  The doctors there took one look at me, and without hesitation, proclaimed that I was profoundly deaf.  Thus began the process of discussing the option of cochlear implants.  
My parents made the decision to begin the procedure of getting me a cochlear implant.

To Be Continued: