My mother, profoundly Deaf since the age of 3, heard my voice for the first time ever today
She’s always been happy being deaf, is very involved with the deaf community and has never expressed a desire to be hearing. However, she decided to try out a new hearing aid just because she might as well, and now she can hear me. I don’t even have to shout. I said “Mum!” and she heard me! That’s never, ever happened before ever! :eek:
She can’t understand words since she has no concept of what different words sound like, but we tried with me saying “Mum” and “hello” and she could tell the difference, kind of. With some practice she might be able to tell what I am saying, but we probably won’t get to that stage since I don’t see her often enough for us to be able to practice. But that’s not important, she’s happy enough to be able to hear the dog barking and traffic and suchlike (and we can of course communicate perfectly well through sign language).
How mental is that though? Imagine if, for your entire life, your mum had never been able to hear you and then one day, you could say “mum” and she heard you. It’s quite mind-boggling.
And now my dad, also profoundly Deaf, is also getting a hearing aid after Christmas. He’s well excited about being able to hear music again, which he hasn’t heard since he was a teenager.
Both of them still very much identify as Deaf, and my mum is very pleased to be able to turn the hearing aid off when she wants to. And I won’t ever stop thinking of them as being Deaf. But it’s still pretty astounding to me to shout “Mum!” and be heard! How’s that for a Christmas present?
Yeah, that’s mostly why she got it. I remember she once stepped in front of an ambulance she didn’t see coming and only got pulled out of the way at the last minute. It was frightening at the time.
Well, that, and to provide me with several hours of entertainment tonight:
Me: Mum!
mum turns her head
Me: You heard me! I said mum and you heard me! I’ll never get tired of this!
And later…
Me, from a different room: MUM! MUUUUM!
no response
Me: MUUUUUUMMMMMM!
I wander into the room she’s in, feeling very worried and disappointed:
Growing up, we’d had a friend who was severely hard of hearing. He’d hit a blasting cap with a hammer in a tunnel his father was working in, and the concussive noise deafened him. He got along well reading lips and with the hearing he had left, getting exceptional grades in school and learning 5 different languages (including speaking them, in his atonal way). He’d always been told by doctors that his hearing couldn’t be improved with hearing aids, so he didn’t think about how it would be. THen he became and adult artist attending University in Germany. The doctors there said “Of course hearing aids can help you!” and promptly fit him for them. It was miraculous. However, he still often takes them out when he doesn’t want to be bothered.
Congrats to your mom. Hopefully she’ll soon be able to work out what the sounds mean. Is she undergoing any therapy to help put them together?
What an incredible story! That’s so cool!
I remember taking my hearing aids out a lot when I first got them because it was just too overwhelming. But then I missed hearing the birds outside, and the sound of tires on the road, stuff like that.
It’s a very interesting aspect of speech, and one I became aquainted with about
two years ago, when I became an OR nurse. I’m fairly hard of hearing, but didn’t realize how much I’d relied on lip reading until I began working in a situation where everyone had their mouths covered! Adding to my difficulty was the fact that I was trying to learn new occupational jargon, and I’d simply never heard many of the words before. I frustrated a LOT of surgeons by saying “I’m sorry, what did you ask for?” twelve times before they spoke loudly enough for me to understand it. Having then heard the word, it was much easier to “hear” it on subsequent occasions.
And Francesca, that’s wonderful for you and your family.
Just in time — let us know what she thinks of Christmas music!
I’ve always been fascinated listening to stories about the life-long deaf, and life-long blind hearing or seeing for the first time, in an Oliver Sacks sort of way. Please share anymore stories and experiences. Sounds like you have cool parents, how old are they?
