My life enhancing hearing aids

This morning I put my hearing aids in earlier than normal after waking up at 5.30am and not being able to get back to sleep. 

I lay there listening to the sounds of a Monday morning and marvelling at just how loud everything sounds in my flat.

What I could mainly hear however, was the pub around the corner and up the road from me getting a keg delivery. It was making a racket. I'd never heard that in my flat before.

It's been like that a lot recently – hearing things I've never heard before. Yesterday while visiting NikNak and chatting to her in her living room I was aware of some noise filtering through. 'What is that?' I asked her, baffled. 'Church bells!' she replied. I was amazed and I think she was a bit, too. I mean, I can only hear church bells normally if I'm right by the church in question.

It's been a bit of a shock. After all, you know how much I liked my pre-hearing aid world. I think, because I can lipread so well and London is quite a noisy place, I never really thought about what I wasn't hearing. And it's not like I could have told you what I wasn't hearing because I didn't know those sounds existed.

The only thing that really really reminded me that I couldn't hear was the fact that I was completely reliant on subtitles to follow anything on the TV.

But get this...

Again, while at NikNak's house yesterday, there was a Peppa Pig DVD playing on a loop as Mini K was poorly and being a massive Peppa fan, this was taking her mind off things.

At one point the entire family were out of the room doing things except for me and Mini K and so we sat in companionable silence watching precocious Peppa flounce around the screen. And do you know what? I could pick up words. I heard actually words from the TV without any subtitles to give me a clue. I could make out enough to work out what was going on in the world of Peppa Pig. OK, so this is a cartoon with kid's language but it's a cartoon, and you can't lipread cartoons!!

How utterly brilliant is that?!

When my audiologist said my hearing aids would get better over time, I didn't really believe him. I kinda thought it was a ploy on his part to get me to keep them in and give them a chance. But I'm quite excited that in December I can go back for my appointment and tell him that they do work, even though he probably knew that already.

They are not miracles and I am not hearing. I am Deafinitely Girly and always will be. But they are life enhancers. And right now, I'm more than happy to have a little bit of that in my world.

Happy Monday peeps!

DG

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