286 I wake up gently, yawn, and bury my head in warm blankets. “You should get up and meditate,” an inner voice suggests, ever so sweetly. She has many ideas, most beginning with you should…. I ignore
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162 “I need help,” I said. I was a mother pleading for her child. The deaf child in me felt isolated and abandoned. I struggled to hear friends or a phone call. Constant vertigo and a roar
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187 “Is this easier or harder?” my audiologist asks. “Raise your hand when you hear a beep. Do you prefer program 1 or program 4? You made great progress in a week, so keep going.” It feels
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136 4 The day before cochlear implant surgery, I lifted weights and took a long brisk walk. Five weeks later, I feel a flickering flame of vitality, fragile and easily snuffed out by stress or restless sleep.
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287 10 My support system is in place, but no one can protect me from vulnerability. When you read this, cochlear implant surgery will be over and I’ll be home recovering. As I write a few days
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139 I heard Evelyn Glennie’s TED talk “How to Truly Listen” when I did a google search for deafness. In 2013, five years after my husband’s death, my already impaired hearing took a nose dive. A new
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376 My cochlear implant surgery is scheduled for February 5. Not the scariest of surgeries, but I haven’t had general anesthesia since I was a girl. I know my doctor well and trust him. My son Anthony
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185 1 Did he really say those words? Did he use that cliché many times, five at least, as we sat knee to knee? “You’re between a rock and a hard place.” I’ve traveled to this hearing
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85 It’s a stretch to call us friends. Meniere is an alien living in me, a shadow, a twin joined at the inner ear. She showed up in the 1990s with a pop in my right ear
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86 My ability to push against fatigue and check new projects off the endless to-do list ran away from home. I’ve looked for her everywhere. Believe me. I have. The Muse refuses to answer my calls. In
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