“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 impossible,
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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. Arctic weather
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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 before surgery,
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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 kind
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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 will
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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 center for
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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 and
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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 a
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Bowls of ripe San Marzano tomatoes flashed red alert on my back porch table. I tried to ignore them. I wanted to do other things: write a blog about something important, attend a dream group, and plan a
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When you receive this non-blog, I’ll be at the tail end of a trip to Florida. My workshop at the C.G. Jung Society of Sarasota with Jean Raffa will be past tense, along with the excitement of designing a
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