I've spent the last week feeling a bit down about my new life being deaf. Sometimes the effort of learning to be deaf and training my brain to hear with the CI takes it toll and I spend some time in self-pity mode.
Today, however, I've decided to concentrate on what I'm grateful for. Top of the list? I'm grateful for my cochlear implant. Without the cochlear implant I am totally deaf. This is a frustrating and isolating way to live in a hearing world, especially living with hearing family members and working in a job that involves speaking and listening. This morning I was running and stopped to let a lady through the gates at the top of an alley. She said 'oh no, you go and then you can keep running". I went, said thank you and then whispered a thank you to Professor Graham Clark, the Australian inventor of the cochlear implant. Simple exchanges with other people are how humans make connections, build relationships, become involved. I'm so gateful that I can do this.
I'm also grateful to Steve Jobs (RIP) for the Apple iphone. My phone and I are never apart and it is the other tool I use to connect to the world. I can't use a normal phone which is very annoying when trying to contact people and organisations. Try making a doctors appointment without using the phone!
Yes, I'm also grateful for my great kids and lovely husband and amazing family and wonderful work colleagues and fabulous friends, I would fall apart without them. However, I connected with them originally in the hearing world and I'm grateful that I can maintain that connection, in the hearing world. Thank you cochlear implant!!!!
xx
P.S I'm not grateful for birds as their tweet, heard through the CI, is one of the most excruciating sounds I currently experience (also running water and plastic bags).
