Beautifulsoul,
A symptom of hearing loss I discovered was the sensation of the frustrated mother next door biffing me on the head for ignoring her! Really, I was just playing around the sidewalk in front of the houses on my block, the lady next door, had kids about the same age and I knew her. I have no memory of what she was saying to me but still I remember what a mortified adult looks and acts like, all in pantomime. She had gone to see my mom about my misbehavior and either she was aware that infection had temporarily deafened me or they discovered it together. All of that is a blur, except for the biff on the head.
It was more traumatic for me than the surprise of a whack. I was suddenly aware of how profound my hearing loss was. The neighbor lady was red faced from screaming, in part. Because most people's hearing is damaged from childhood infections, how old you are now has some bearing on hearing loss. Sadly, especially in America, we ignore the eyes, ears and teeth as something that you can do without, from an insurance coverage standpoint.
Your stories are a powerful reminder of this wonderful gift and the dangers they face. Ototoxicity is a pretty big oversight in advising a patient of potential side effects. I'm part of the generation that has really bad tetracycline staining of the teeth and Thalidimide babies. Then again, by 1960 pharmaceutical companies began to defund antibiotic research, believing that the war on infection had been won. Silly them.
Helen Keller was once quoted to say that blindness isolates us from things but being deaf cuts us off from people. The closest I have been to the situation she describes was when I got heavy into caving, spelunking for days, up to a week or more. The University Grotto Club was mapping ground water flow for the BLM (Bureau of Land Management), stationing people wherever water surfaced in a network of caves. I was leading a group of newcomers and we're set up about a quarter mile from the entrance. Two bailed on the way to our future home for 3 days. I'm a lot happier when someone who is not comfortable speaking up because I have seen the carnage of abject panic. Once we got to the observation room and camp, it was lights out except for the UV lamp over the moving water. It was invisible and the darkness was total. In the dark, everything is in the voice. After two days, you could tell who's minds were beautiful, or insecure, flat or glib. When we emerged, the voice derived opinion stuck. It was one of the sport's best features.
You never said whether your world is adjusted to Micky mouse,
LL