Do you need any accommodations?

At my internship my supervisor asked me what she and the office could do to make things easier for me after the surgery. I told her I appreciated her flexibility with my having to miss work and she waved that off saying, "don't worry about it! What can we do to make your life easier though" and I thought that was just so considerate, I really appreciated it and it made me realize two things.

1. I have no idea what it's going to be like to live with only one "functioning" ear until the Esteem is turned on, which could take 2-3 weeks.

2. I've come a hell of a long way from my "I don't need anything from anyone and don't you dare offer" (about my hearing) years. I may still feel that way internally on a rare occasion but oh my goodness was I a terror about this as a child! OK, until college.  (click on "read more")



I think these are both things that might come up again but since they were on my mind and since this blog is for sharing what's on my mind I want to talk about them a tiny bit.

By the way, I still can't believe I'm putting my thoughts and feelings online for the whole world, oy, what am I thinking? so weird.

OK so for #1. I have never, except for one week in high school, had to live with only one hearing aid. There might have been another week once in middle school but I really don't remember. My internship this summer is a very warm environment so I'm not worried about that too much. It might kinda suck to have one sided hearing though. I barely have any directionality in my hearing now, imagine how that will sound; I'll never know where anyone's voice is coming from! I'm like one of those fish that has eyes on either side of its head and no depth perception so imagine losing an eye. Oh well, I'll live, and I'll definitely keep you posted on what, if anything, is difficult or different about having one ear.

And the second thing, oh man, where to begin. Basically as a kid I would get really upset if I ever thought anybody was doing anything for me because of my hearing aids, accommodating me in any way. I did not think I needed anything ever.

For those of you who maybe don't know me or didn't know me until college, when I got in-the-ear hearing aids that are minimally visible, I feel I should give some background. As a small child I had very large hearing aids with wires and everything. Eventually, around 1st grade, the wires were gone but until college I had very visible behind-the-ear hearing aids. There was no question that people could see I had a hearing loss and it did on occasion affect how people spoke to me or treated me. This sucked.

I still don't think that I needed much, but it did at least matter where I sat... and maybe there were other things that were maybe slightly helpful. Look at this, I'm 21 years old and I'm doing the exact same thing in this paragraph as I did all these years, just more diplomatically! I seem to have turned out OK, so whatever was going on must have been fine. Anyway, I still cringe a little every time I get an e-mail from the office of disabilities at school reminding me to get my documentation in (I'm not going to though, I've only needed an official letter of accommodations once for a Spanish class my freshman year).

So, what does the Esteem mean for me about this? It means that for the first time in my life, once I have both ears implanted, I will never be able to accuse a person of trying to accommodate me without my consent. The word accuse feels weird here, after all, people are really just trying to help and be nice but I was never able to accept this. Now I can accept it as a good intention but I still don't like it if I sense I'm being accommodated in a way I haven't asked for.

The invisibility of the Esteem will mean that I can choose who gets to accommodate me. That's going to be so weird and I'm going to have to really think hard about what kind of strategy I will want to take. This is all a long way off as I can only get one ear done at a time but I don't know how I'll feel about telling somebody about my hearing loss if I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

I hope that choice will not come back to bite me and that if I need something I will ask for it but I have a feeling I might be hesitant. The choice though, the choice to decide who gets to accommodate me, I think will be so strange and hopefully so liberating.

side note: I figured out how to make text different sizes and colors!

Edit: I just want to clarify, because I'm worried people might not understand. It's not that I don't appreciate when my friends and family look out for me, as I said in my 2nd post I'm incredibly lucky that they do. My point here is simply that there is a difference for me between my friends repeating something when I ask or when it's clear that I'm lost and when somebody (usually somebody I don't really know) is speaking differently to me than to other people. read: slllooooowwwwlllyyyy and loudly or tapping me every time they want to speak to me. What will change I think is that I will be able to say, if I want to, "Oh by the way, I don't hear so well, do you mind putting captioning on the movie" versus somebody with good intentions treating me a certain way because they see my hearing aids.