What did you just say?

Back in 2009 I got my hearing checked. Primarily because Boy Toy wouldn’t shut up about my not listening to him.  Well funny thing. Apparently I had some hearing loss. They wanted me to schedule an appointment with a doctor and blah blah blah. I never did anything about it because it seemed as if the only person I couldn’t hear was Boy Toy. And really was that such a bad thing?

Fast forward to now. I made another appointment, but this time made sure I was also seeing the doctor after the hearing test. Why? Spotty Chop tells me he loves me all the time. Lately I can’t understand what he is saying. When he needs me and he calls out for me I don’t respond, because I don’t hear him call me. I can’t even tell you how horrible it is to realize that you aren’t hearing your kid tell you he loves you. My sadness knows no bounds.

So what happened? I had a hearing test. My results were not “normal”. Well, as the technician said “you having hearing loss this young isn’t normal to begin with, but the graph of your hearing loss isn’t normal either. “

In “normal” hearing loss it looks like this. 

As  you age your ability to hear high pitched sounds (including consonants)  decreases. But this generally doesn’t start until your late 60’s or 70’s

This is what mine looks like. 

We can see that I can hear the low pitches as well as the high pitches. It the middle stuff that is all wonky. Basically I can’t hear vowels. Unless they are loud enough.  Apparently vowels aren’t as important as consonants because consonants convey most of the word info and they act as breakpoints for syllables. Which is why this hasn’t really affected me too badly up until now.   

So what does this mean? I have to get hearing aids. Both ears. I am less than pleased about this outcome. It pretty much blindsided me.

I have been a bit freaked out by this, but I am slowly coming to terms with it.  I mean

 a) it’s not the end of the world and

 b) good fucking god things could be so much worse.  I have a couple of friends that are dealing with an unimaginable amount of hurt right now. Hurt that I wouldn’t wish on too many people (there are a couple though…) so as I so often say “suck it up buttercup” it is what it is.

There is good news though.

a)It is genetic, but not hereditary, so I won’t pass this on to Spotty.  

b)  I have only lost 5-10 decibels since 2009, so the loss is going kinda slow 

c) There is also some really promising research going on right now with stem cells. They think within the next 50 years there may be a treatment for this that would regrow auditory hair cells. This is cool because currently there is no treatment for this type of hearing loss. It can’t be cured.

So it looks like I will be wearing my hair down a lot more often in the future.  God DAMN it now I will be dealing with frizzy hair too. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhh