His arms and legs were tangled in mine, our first night together. From above we resembled a lover's yoga pose. I felt free and bold and wildly unguarded, until his rough voice scratched against my ear. My confidence deflated, and my body tensed. It wasn't what he'd said that murdered my mood, but that I couldn't hear it. He'd whispered it into my left ear, my deaf ear.
He took my silence as lack of interest, and I didn't correct him. Confessions of maladies should be a clothed conversation, something I'd divulge eventually... when I had to.
Standing at 5-foot-8, I appeared willowy and well dressed; he probably noticed my Irish eyes first and then studied their contrast to my bronze Colombian skin. This man, with everyone else, assumed that I was a healthy young woman. And why wouldn't he? There was no wheelchair, no trained animal by my side. My injury was invisible.
But at 24, I had gone from a feisty, uninhibited, outspoken yogini to a statistic. The transition took minutes. I'd been sitting in my midtown office when it started, typing another day away in my job as an assistant (read: glorified coffee fetcher). A harsh ringing pierced my ears so suddenly that I flinched and contemplated diving under my desk. A co-worker walked by slowly, assessing my hunched position.
"What is that?" I asked her, unsure if I should be moving toward the nearest exit.
"What's what?" She leaned in.
The screeching, only audible to me, went on for 30 seconds before panic paraded in. I told myself not to overreact (a trait I get from my mother, who believes every headache is a brain tumor, every sneeze a pneumonia). But as the ringing filled my head, I knew something wasn't right. Without a word I stood and rushed out of the office and into a cab. We raced to the emergency room.
Three days later, I was propped up against pillows, connected to an IV. If I tilted even slightly, the room spun, dizzying lights forced my eyes to stay squeezed shut. A doctor sat on the edge of my bed and compared hearing to the propellers of a plane. If one propeller went out, the plane lost its balance and would begin to spin out of control. By the end of his crash course in vertigo, I was seeing double.
Three different nurses in three different washed-out cartoon scrubs came to my room to prick me, demanding vials of blood. My skull was scanned and screened from every angle. A hearing test was scheduled last. I was seated in a small, padded room, a set of headphones covering both ears.
"Repeat after me," said a toothy brunette from behind tinted glass. "We'll start with your right ear. Pencil," she said slowly.
I sat up straight. "Pencil," I repeated proudly.
"Book."
I echoed each word, reassured that my right ear was still alive.
"Now I will use the left headphone," she warned.
I took a deep breath and listened, but could only hear the shrill buzzing like an obnoxious fly. She waited for a response.
"I can't hear you. I can't hear anything!" My voice cracked, and tears dropped.
When the doctor came in that night, his smile was misleading. "Well, it seems you didn't suffer blunt trauma, there's no trace of a virus or a budding tumor. That's the good news." He shrugged and then admitted he had no idea what the cause was, but he was certain it was irreversible.
"How could that be?" I begged for more information.
"It's an anomaly, just one of those things," he said rubbing his hands together. I stared at the TV behind him, the sound muted. He handed me a prescription for Ginkgo Biloba. "It sometimes helps with tinnitus, which is what we call that god-awful ringing you can't get rid of," he said.
My diagnosis was more of a description: sudden hearing loss.
That day, I unwillingly joined the deaf and hard-of-hearing population. Most were either born that way or slowly lost their ability to hear around the time they hit retirement age. Newly out of graduate school, I was a minority.
I was stuck in bed with severe nausea and vertigo, obsessively Googling my new ailment. The doctor suggested we wait and see if my hearing came back on its own, treating my trauma like it was a bored house cat that might wander back any day now. I waited for weeks and months and seasons and nothing happened.
New York City, the vibrant place I'd once fallen madly for, became a nightmare. The streets were humming, whirring. Tractors moaned, ambulances screamed, the click of lighters and the hiss of brooms brushing cafe floors were torture. I heard everything on one side and nothing on the other; it drove me mad never knowing where each sound came from. The idea of riding my bike along traffic-heavy streets brought on panic attacks. I stopped leaving home, choosing to order in for food and call out
He took my silence as lack of interest, and I didn't correct him. Confessions of maladies should be a clothed conversation, something I'd divulge eventually... when I had to.
Standing at 5-foot-8, I appeared willowy and well dressed; he probably noticed my Irish eyes first and then studied their contrast to my bronze Colombian skin. This man, with everyone else, assumed that I was a healthy young woman. And why wouldn't he? There was no wheelchair, no trained animal by my side. My injury was invisible.
But at 24, I had gone from a feisty, uninhibited, outspoken yogini to a statistic. The transition took minutes. I'd been sitting in my midtown office when it started, typing another day away in my job as an assistant (read: glorified coffee fetcher). A harsh ringing pierced my ears so suddenly that I flinched and contemplated diving under my desk. A co-worker walked by slowly, assessing my hunched position.
"What is that?" I asked her, unsure if I should be moving toward the nearest exit.
"What's what?" She leaned in.
The screeching, only audible to me, went on for 30 seconds before panic paraded in. I told myself not to overreact (a trait I get from my mother, who believes every headache is a brain tumor, every sneeze a pneumonia). But as the ringing filled my head, I knew something wasn't right. Without a word I stood and rushed out of the office and into a cab. We raced to the emergency room.
Three days later, I was propped up against pillows, connected to an IV. If I tilted even slightly, the room spun, dizzying lights forced my eyes to stay squeezed shut. A doctor sat on the edge of my bed and compared hearing to the propellers of a plane. If one propeller went out, the plane lost its balance and would begin to spin out of control. By the end of his crash course in vertigo, I was seeing double.
Three different nurses in three different washed-out cartoon scrubs came to my room to prick me, demanding vials of blood. My skull was scanned and screened from every angle. A hearing test was scheduled last. I was seated in a small, padded room, a set of headphones covering both ears.
"Repeat after me," said a toothy brunette from behind tinted glass. "We'll start with your right ear. Pencil," she said slowly.
I sat up straight. "Pencil," I repeated proudly.
"Book."
I echoed each word, reassured that my right ear was still alive.
"Now I will use the left headphone," she warned.
I took a deep breath and listened, but could only hear the shrill buzzing like an obnoxious fly. She waited for a response.
"I can't hear you. I can't hear anything!" My voice cracked, and tears dropped.
When the doctor came in that night, his smile was misleading. "Well, it seems you didn't suffer blunt trauma, there's no trace of a virus or a budding tumor. That's the good news." He shrugged and then admitted he had no idea what the cause was, but he was certain it was irreversible.
"How could that be?" I begged for more information.
"It's an anomaly, just one of those things," he said rubbing his hands together. I stared at the TV behind him, the sound muted. He handed me a prescription for Ginkgo Biloba. "It sometimes helps with tinnitus, which is what we call that god-awful ringing you can't get rid of," he said.
My diagnosis was more of a description: sudden hearing loss.
That day, I unwillingly joined the deaf and hard-of-hearing population. Most were either born that way or slowly lost their ability to hear around the time they hit retirement age. Newly out of graduate school, I was a minority.
I was stuck in bed with severe nausea and vertigo, obsessively Googling my new ailment. The doctor suggested we wait and see if my hearing came back on its own, treating my trauma like it was a bored house cat that might wander back any day now. I waited for weeks and months and seasons and nothing happened.
New York City, the vibrant place I'd once fallen madly for, became a nightmare. The streets were humming, whirring. Tractors moaned, ambulances screamed, the click of lighters and the hiss of brooms brushing cafe floors were torture. I heard everything on one side and nothing on the other; it drove me mad never knowing where each sound came from. The idea of riding my bike along traffic-heavy streets brought on panic attacks. I stopped leaving home, choosing to order in for food and call out