Waking Up

As I'm sitting in my dorm room, I just put my hearing aid and cochlear implant on. I'm just sitting here observing sounds that I had never heard before I had been activated. One sound that struck me was my roommates breathing as he's sleeping. Another thing that I've heard is somebody unlock their door to the bathroom that we share. I heard my computer's hard drive slow down just a minute ago. All of these are sounds that I had never heard before. It is truly amazing that something so small can be put in your head and you can be given the gift of hearing.

Something that was hard for me to get over when I was deciding to get the cochlear implant was the cosmetic appearance of the outside device. To me, it's quite large. Honestly, it probably isn't any different to any other hearing aids that I've had in the past, but the thing that was bothering me was the magnet and the wire that connected to it. It seemed huge. Now that I've gotten the external piece activated, and I've heard the sounds, honestly I couldn't care less what other people think about what it looks like.

Sure, I've had a few stares here and there, and I've had a 75 year old man at Pops point out that we had the same equipment (it isn't the first time), but honestly I don't care. I had gone so long without hearing sounds and now to be able to hear them is awesome. Sure, it looks a little different, but it allows me to be able to hear almost everything.

The cochlear implant allows me to be able to turn around when you say my name, it allows me to hear the punch line to the joke that everybody is laughing at, it allows me to be able to hear the full lecture in class, it allows me to understand the TV show without captions, it allows me to go to the movies and do more than stare at actors, and most important: it allows me to connect to people, because being deaf can disconnect you from people if you let it. Just as anything else will.

Have a good day