I got the occassional cold...but who didn't? Every illness was dismissed as just a regular illness because I thought it was...but then one day I realized it wasn't. I realized it never had been.
The dots were there but I didn't start connecting them until about 2 years ago and 4 diagnoses later...
DOT #1 -
About 10 years ago, I got an ear infection. That might seem unremarkeable to most people but it was the first one of my life and I was 25. I went to the doctor after a couple of days because of the ache. She immediately put me on antibiotics, which cleared up the pain, but my hearing seemed instantly "muffled" and just never recovered. I turned the sound in my car up because the words were inexplicably unclear...but I blamed it on the speakers because it was an old car, right?
Progressively it got worse but I didn't want to admit it. I was too prideful. I would just deal with it.
And then the ringing began...
At first, it wasn't so bad. I only noticed it when it was quiet so I kept it from being quiet. I always had something on...ALWAYS. But soon my ears rang non-stop, so much so that I couldn't fall asleep at night. The ringing just would not go away, no matter what I did.
I was at my wits end so I mentioned it in passing at a check-up. She dismissed it as me getting older (at the ripe old age of 28) reassuring me that these things just happen. So I resolved to suck it up and deal with it...and that's just what I did.
When we brought home our first son, Matthew, we started using closed caption with the tv so we didn't wake him up. We left it on most of the time, but one day I noticed that I needed closed caption regardless of the volume. And then I noticed other things.
If Danny wasn't facing me when he talked, I couldn't understand him. Sometimes I couldn't understand him when he was facing me. I would get onto him about enunciating clearly...but it wasn't just him.
It was everyone, everywhere. No one spoke clearly. I found myself saying, "Huh? What?" all the time...but got embarrased by that so just started nodding. (Scary to think what I might have agreed to or not followed through on.)
The final straw was when I took my son for his check-up. I was sitting right across from the doctor and the room was quiet but I could not understand what he was saying. I was embarassed and broke down right there crying. I told him that I could hear him but not clearly enough to understand him. He prayed with me (see - awesome doctor) and he immediately referred me for testing.
It took months to get an appointment, but I remember everything about that day so clearly. The audiologist was a gentle older man. He led me into the "vault" and explained the testing process to me. After several attempts at finding me earbuds, he finally fitted me with a pair of pediatric earbuds because my ears are so small. We casually laughed about this and then he left the room and went to his booth and began the test. I strained to hear something, anything. I raised my hand a few times when I thought I maybe heard something and then a few times just because I felt like I should be hearing something.
I knew something was desperately wrong when he came back to prepare me for the next portion of the exam because his entire demeanor and approach to me changed. He took the earbuds off and instead of standing up straight at a comfortable distance from me, he crouched down right in front of me and spoke VERY loudly and enunciated VERY distinctly.
I remember thinking to myself, "I must be absolutely deaf" and I remember tearing up but I made it through the rest of the test and then he came back in.
I looked at him and did the one thing I wasn't supposed to do, ask.
"It's bad, isn't it? How much am I hearing, like percentage wise?"
He looked down and mumbled some stuff about how the ENT would go over my results with me but then he looked up and he saw the big, hot tears streaming down my face. As much as I tried to stay composed, there was just no hiding it. I was in full blown ugly cry.
This gentle audioligist knelt down in front of me and he told me that I was hearing around 55% in both ears but that I had a great ENT and that great advancements had been made in hearing implements. I wiped my face, thanked him and walked out to my car. When I got in the car I texted my husband and I just cried, something I had never done before because of my health. I could handle the medicines and the prognisis and the nearly dying somehow methodically and unemotionally...
but my hearing?
That stirred up in me a well of emotion I didn't know was there.
But in that well of emotion, God was there.
He sent that gentle audioligist and He sent me to just the right ENT as well.
My husband joined me for the ENT appointment. By this time, my lack of hearing had become a joke around the house, a welcome change from the tears. The ENT walked in and went over the results with us but as he talked, I noticed something...He was wearing hearing aids.
I asked him to share his story and it was similar to mine. He too had suffered early, unexplained hearing loss in his mid 20's that had gone undetected over time until it was just undeniable. He assured me that hearing aids would be an option for me but he had a better option, one that he wished was available to him, a stapedectomy. They would remove my stapes bone and replace it with a prosthetic device. It was, of course, not without risk and came with a lot of restricted activity for the mother of a 1 year old, but it was what he would do if he were me.
I was unsure. I said we would pray. My husband was certain and leveraged my 1 year old in the "battle". He knew I didn't want to miss a single word Matthew said to me...ever...and knew that if I didn't do this, I would miss those words, too many of those words.
They tested me again a month later and my hearing had dropped to 45% across all ranges and frequencies. So we signed on. I would have the surgery one ear at a time.
My miracle ENT doctor performed 2 stapedectomies within six months of each other. My hearing shot up to 90% in one ear and about 93% in the other. It was remarkable and unheard of...no pun intended!
God restored my hearing but He restored so much more through the hands of that ENT and audiologist than just my hearing.
I had a new tenderness
a new understanding
a new compassion
and a new story.
But there were more dots to come...
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