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Wednesday 21 November 2012
Friday 2 November 2012
The return from Singapore
Singapore was a blast, I had so much fun. We went everywhere and did everything.
It was the first time I'd been away with friends since becoming deaf and there were a few differences I noticed. The first being the isolation between the deaf and the hearing. While it wasn't overly obvious, I still felt a little left out of things because I simply didn't know what was going on. I always had to ask the others "what's happening" just be kept in the loop. This really came to a head when five minutes before we were due to board the plane to return home, one of the girls I was travelling with announced she had lost her passport. No passport, no boarding the plane. This obviously created a huge amount of stress for all of us as we tried to come up with solutions to get home. The worst part from my point of view was that in the panic I didn't know what was going on. I guess that's how children feel most of the time when adults are making decisions for them but the adults don't stop to explain what's happening. This is a bit how I felt, like a child.
I also had a minor panic of my own when my batteries went flat and I had to change them during dinner. I use disposable batteries when I travel so I don't have to worry about recharging my normal ones. I replaced the flat batteries but when I tried to turn the processor on it didn't work. Panic, panic, panic. Thoughts kept swirling in my head that I'd have to go deaf for the rest of the trip, that I couldn't go off shopping on my own or chat with my friends or all sorts of things ........... I tried a number of different things, finally taking the batteries out and replacing them the other way around. Phew, this worked. I experienced a wave of relief. Having had the cochlear implant for a year now I simply cannot go back to being deaf again, not even for a day.
The best part of the trip? When one of my friends turned to me at the end of the long midnight flight and asked if I had got any sleep. "Yep", I said, "slept like a baby with my ear turned off, how about you?". "No", she replied, "there was a baby crying the whole way ....................".
It was the first time I'd been away with friends since becoming deaf and there were a few differences I noticed. The first being the isolation between the deaf and the hearing. While it wasn't overly obvious, I still felt a little left out of things because I simply didn't know what was going on. I always had to ask the others "what's happening" just be kept in the loop. This really came to a head when five minutes before we were due to board the plane to return home, one of the girls I was travelling with announced she had lost her passport. No passport, no boarding the plane. This obviously created a huge amount of stress for all of us as we tried to come up with solutions to get home. The worst part from my point of view was that in the panic I didn't know what was going on. I guess that's how children feel most of the time when adults are making decisions for them but the adults don't stop to explain what's happening. This is a bit how I felt, like a child.
I also had a minor panic of my own when my batteries went flat and I had to change them during dinner. I use disposable batteries when I travel so I don't have to worry about recharging my normal ones. I replaced the flat batteries but when I tried to turn the processor on it didn't work. Panic, panic, panic. Thoughts kept swirling in my head that I'd have to go deaf for the rest of the trip, that I couldn't go off shopping on my own or chat with my friends or all sorts of things ........... I tried a number of different things, finally taking the batteries out and replacing them the other way around. Phew, this worked. I experienced a wave of relief. Having had the cochlear implant for a year now I simply cannot go back to being deaf again, not even for a day.
The best part of the trip? When one of my friends turned to me at the end of the long midnight flight and asked if I had got any sleep. "Yep", I said, "slept like a baby with my ear turned off, how about you?". "No", she replied, "there was a baby crying the whole way ....................".
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