Second Doctor Visit – Medrol, Be Gone!

Well, I’ve finished the Medrol (11 days worth).  The potential side effects were really alarming:  Mood swings!  Sudden weight gain!  Acne!  Increased appetite!  Sleeplessness!  Ironically, I seem to be having more trouble readjusting to being off the medicine than I did while I was actually on it.  I noticed some periods where my heart was [...]

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Talking with my hands

It’s ironic, considering that I’ve been hard of hearing basically my whole life, but I’ve always wanted to know sign language. I think it’s amazing and expressive and just … wonderful. If there had been sign language classes in my high school, I would’ve taken them in a heartbeat!
But I’ve never learned. The [...]

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…. BOO!

Um, yea. Scary movies are not that scary without sound.
Try it sometime. Watch a scary movie (one you’ve never seen, so you can’t anticipate the tense music or what’s going to happen) with the sound muted and captions on. It’s really a different experience!
I’m not a horror movie buff by any means, [...]

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Avert your eyes

I just realized something tonight when we were watching two of our favorite medical dramas, Grey’s Anatomy and ER: I have to watch the surgery scenes! Aaagh!
Normally I avert my eyes during anything bloody/gory/graphic because I’m a wuss. It sounds a little strange but usually I watch the TV reflection in our [...]

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Caption Observations

If you’re ever really curious to know what it’s like for a deaf person to watch TV, it’s easy to experience:  turn the captioning on and mute the volume.  It really is a totally different experience when you only have the captions to rely on!
I’ve been using captions on the TV since they were readily [...]

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Here we go again

I’m still at the stage where I have to relive my deafness every morning.  It’s slowly starting to get easier but I still have that initial shock when I put my hearing aids in and everything still sounds the same.
The first night that I lost all of my hearing, I was really devastated and still [...]

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Diagnosis…the First Visit to the Doctor

Finally, it’s Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully I can get an answer one way or the other, and then begin the process of either dealing with my newfound deafness or rejoicing in the fact that I was worrying for nothing. I’m generally an optimistic person but sometimes it’s easier to assume the worst so that [...]

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Deafness Is Not Silent

At least it isn’t for me. I always imagined that being deaf was just like the way it’s portrayed in movies – they remove the audio completely and there’s a total absence of sound.
I have tinnitus all the time. I never walk around hearing absolutely nothing. I hear either the wind rushing [...]

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Hindsight is 20/20

It’s all so obvious now. All the little things that I noticed. I had no idea what they would add up to.
April 2008: Since the start of the month or so, I’ve been complaining that the TV sounds strange. Normally I hear bass sounds pretty well and treble sounds kind of [...]

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