Hearing--and other--losses

I've found the process of adjusting to my hearing aid, and having an ear that doesn't 'work' right to be a major adjustment. I wrote about the experience in my Bay Windows column:

Life in the slow lane
by Judah Leblang | www.JudahLeblang.com
In March of 2006, at the end of a mild but dreary winter, I lost most of the hearing in my left ear. “Lost” is a strange word — not quite what I’m looking for — as if I’d just misplaced my ability to hear, like my ski gloves or blue cashmere coat.

I didn’t think much about it at the time. It was another gray late-winter morning, and I rolled out of bed, groggily, and answered the phone. I had to shift the receiver to my right ear to hear the caller; my left felt plugged up, as if I’d been in a plane, as if my ear wouldn’t or couldn’t pop. Days went by, and then weeks. I waited for things to return to normal. When they didn’t, I finally emailed my doctor. He suggested ear-drops and nose spray, assuming that my sinuses were merely congested.

In the mean time, I had more pressing issues. I went to the dermatologist to check a lump in my low back. While that turned out to be nothing, the doctor removed a small mole on my chest, sending it out for a biopsy. A week later, I discovered I had melanoma, and I forgot all about my hearing problem. Fortunately, the mole was caught very early, and after a quick excision, I was declared cancer-free.

In late summer, I finally went to an ear specialist. I’d been waiting all those months for my hearing to return to normal. In the mean time, I found it difficult to understand conversations in a crowded restaurant or bar; I was always a step late, trying to fill in the missing pieces. Before I saw the “ENT” (ear, nose and throat) doctor, I was given a hearing test. Sitting in a soundproof glass booth, I raised my hand whenever I could hear one in a series of beeping tones. There were long periods of silence, periods in which I strained to discern those faint beeps, knowing that despite my best efforts, I couldn’t catch them.

Ironically, I’d earned my undergraduate degree, 25-plus years before, in education of the deaf. After graduation, I taught deaf children for eight years, and later, in the mid- to late-1990s, worked as a sign language interpreter. I’d seen a thousand hearing aids, but had never paid them much attention; the aids belonged to some of my students and my hard of hearing friends, not to someone like me.

Now, after a quick glance at my audiogram, I knew that something was seriously wrong. The lines, which indicated my degree of loss, sloped downward and straight across the lower quadrant of the graph, deep in “severe” territory. I waited impatiently for the doctor to come in and tell me how he could fix my problem. But the doctor, it turned out, had nothing to offer me.

“Hmm,” he said. “This is unusual. You’ve got a severe loss in one ear, while your other ear is almost normal.”
“Do you know what caused it? Is there anything you can do?” I asked, my stomach tightening.

The doctor, loose and unhurried, didn’t seem particularly concerned. Nothing seemed to disturb his mellow mood, and his air of disinterest.

“Nope, and not really. I’d just say come back in about a year, and we’ll fit you with a hearing aid.”

I walked out of his office feeling dizzy, light-headed. Something I’d taken for granted, my ability to hear, was now fundamentally changed. I felt older, flawed, a bit like Rosey, the robot-maid on the 1960s show, The Jetsons, who was always in danger of being replaced by a newer, sleeker model.

I went to second doctor who was a bit kinder, more sympathetic. He sent me to another audiologist, who fit me with one hearing aid, then another, and now a third. From time to time, I sit in the white fluorescence of her office as she tweaks my aid. I respond to a series of beeps, and now, even in my left ear, I can hear normal conversations.

Still, it takes getting used to. During the day, I turn my “false ear” on and off, and remove it in the rain, wind or at the gym. As the audiologist, a sweet-voiced Southern blonde, informed me on my last office visit, “Not a day will go by when you don’t think about your hearing, for the rest of your life.”

I’m enrolled in a club I never wanted to join, the ranks of the hard of hearing. Suddenly I’m reminded of the periodic letters I receive from the AARP, inviting me to enjoy the wonderful “benefits” of being a member of their 50-plus club. And then I hold the hearing aid in my hand, its oblong shape like a miniature 3-D map of South America. This tool, about one-quarter of the length of my little finger, allows me to have most of what I once had, with a few adjustments.

And that’s what getting older is about, it seems to me, from this vantage point in middle age: adjusting to those necessary losses, and making peace with them.

Caution: Boomer Aging Gracelessly

I've always been youthful for my age/immature, and even today, most folks guess I'm much closer to 40 than to 50 (my real age). But internally, after the adventures of this past year, I feel like I've caught up with my contemporaries, and I have the scars--and hearing loss--to prove it. Although I've been very fortunate--my melanoma was caught early due to the eagle eye of my dermatologist--I now have a four-inch-long scar in the center of my chest. I now wear a hearing aid in my left ear. (When it's not whistling or annoying the hell out of me). I now experience that sensation of being stuck in a narrow tube several times a year, when I go in for my MRI.

Basically, I've become a human version of my 1997 Mercury Tracer, which has over 100K miles and needs frequent upkeep. Like the Tracer, I've accumulated five decades of wear and tear and need upkeep, too. It seems I'm spending more and more time in the medical "shop," going to see various specialists/mechanics.

Unfortunately, I can't trade myself in for a new model, and I don't come with a 50+ year warranty.

Finding Our Tribes

We're all inherently tribal; it's part of human nature and not inherently good or bad. Here's a piece I published recently in Bay Windows. My columns are also on-line at http://www.baywindows.com.

Finding Our Tribes

Judah Leblang/2007
Word count: 855

Finally, blessedly, after a month or six weeks of “false spring,” it seems that Mother Nature is smiling on us here in New England. Hardy daffodils are swaying in the warm breezes, and the sun—that wonderful golden orb—is sending temperatures into the 60s and 70s. For me, spring means longer days, better moods, and major league baseball.

Though I’m not, and never was, a real athlete, I grew up with the ritual of going to baseball games in a cold cavernous Lakefront Stadium on the shores of Lake Erie, and of rooting for my hometown team. In short, I’m a little league dropout, possessed of a weak arm and a strong fear of getting hit by one of those baseballs I couldn’t catch. Still, I’m an excellent fan and enjoy watching the pros, not only because they fill out their uniforms. Growing up, I actually cared, and still care, about the outcome of the games. Unfortunately, my team was the hapless Cleveland Indians, who missed the playoffs for 41 consecutive years, all during my childhood, youth, young adulthood, etc.

Most of my gay friends don’t get it; they respond to the opening of baseball season with a muffled yawn or a rousing chorus of “ho-hum.” I have to call my cousin back home, or meet another displaced Clevelander here in the Northeast to “talk Cleveland” and share my pain. Why do I hold on, especially when the Red Sox are an excellent team with a large payroll and my Indians are mediocre and cash-strapped?

I’m cursed with a strong sense of loyalty. Even after a span of 20 years, I’ve been unable to transfer my allegiance to the Red Sox; I still follow “the Tribe.” The Indians remain my crush, holding me in their grip like a bad boyfriend with good intentions, unable to follow through and give me the thrill of a World Series Championship, (though they were only two outs away in 1997).

I was reflecting on the concept of tribes this past week, as I sat in my synagogue at Friday night services after months away, and as I watched the awful news from Virginia Tech on TV. We all have multiple identities---some of them more serious or weighted—others light or silly. I am, among others, a Jew, a gay man, a Clevelander, middle-aged, a writer, and so on. Human beings are inherently tribal; we long for association and connection, and as I looked around the synagogue I used to attend regularly, I felt both related to and disconnected from the people around me.

I’m not an especially observant Jew, and given my life circumstances over the past year, I’m somewhat skeptical of an all-powerful Higher Power. Sitting in the sanctuary, I felt my difference as a single gay man in a room full of straight couples and families. At the same time, some of these people are my friends, and we share our common Jewish background, history, and culture.

Similarly, on Sunday mornings I often go to Arlington Street Church in Boston. There, I connect with other gays and lesbians, with people who understand that central part of me, and who I can relate to in a different way than the folks at temple. And yet, sometimes I feel like a foreigner there, too, the proverbial wandering Jew, as I sit in my pew and sing the Christian-themed hymns, as the minister speaks of Easter and Christmas.

We all face choices, I believe, in looking for ways of connecting or disconnecting with the people around us. I’m guilty of labeling those who disagree with me—Republicans, foes of same-sex marriage, Yankee fans—as bad people. I’ve personally driven by the Catholic Church near my home and harbored evil thoughts toward this institution that seeks to take away my rights, which judges me and all gays as “less than” and undeserving. In the days after the Constitutional Conventions, I noticed this sense of ill will churning in my stomach, tightening my solar plexus. Carrying that level of rage and frustration wasn’t hurting “them;” I was actually harming myself. I felt some of that same rage after the “stolen” presidential election of 2000, when I lost all faith in the Supreme Court and the fairness of our national elections.

And yet, some of those folks—conservatives, Christians, and others—may be writers, Indians fans, gay or lesbian. Potentially, one on one, I could find common ground with some of them. During these turbulent times, when so many things are done in the name of hate, self-righteousness, and fear of the “other,” we could all benefit from a little compassion, a little understanding for those who are different from us.

Maybe someday we can truly celebrate our differences and acknowledge that underneath, we’re all part of the human family. Ultimately, I have to start with myself, and work on my own self-righteousness, and the way I create separation from others.

I hope that someday, though all of our tribes will not meld into oneness, we will learn to respect each other and get along. Unfortunately, we’re not there yet.