Member-only story
The Day I Found Out I Was Going Deaf
I was told I had an inherited condition
Television had sounded muffled for about a month, and I began to wonder why everybody was mumbling. Like an elderly person without a hearing aid, I urged people to speak up. But I was only 38. My hearing was fine!
Then one day when I was walking, I noticed something strange. An airplane flying low overhead was eerily silent. Not even the distant drone of an engine pierced the quiet of a sunny summer afternoon.
I still didn’t suspect that I was going deaf. I was too busy taking care of young children, who were loud enough and time-consuming enough to camouflage my hearing loss. While my husband watched television at night, I read books, so it was no big deal if he didn’t turn the volume up.
The truth hit me suddenly when I was on the phone with a friend. For a couple of weeks, I had complained about low phone volume. My friend’s voice sounded faint and faraway, as if she were speaking through a tunnel.
The problem wasn’t the phone. It was my ear
As usual, I was multitasking; making brownies and talking on the phone at the same time. Being left handed, I held the phone to my left ear. But in the middle of our conversation, I switched it to my right ear so I could…
