Laura McCullough-DeLorme is 38, from Green Bay, Wisconsin, and is an aspiring playwright.  Her blog is Little Orange Kitchen.

My hearing loss was gradual at first and I chalked it off to people mumbling. Eventually my husband noticed that I was constantly asking him to repeat himself and that I didn’t pick up noises like loud birds outside our window or even the cat meowing in the next room.  I finally went to an audiologist.  I have sixty percent loss in both ears.  To discover the loss was equal in both ears scared me. The doctor suggested hearing aids.   I started to cry and left the office.   I continued to avoid the topic, but when my husband and I went to a play, I realized that I was missing most of the dialog and blinked back tears for the entire performance. I sat there thinking that all I wanted was to have my own plays produced and that by the time that happened I might not be able to hear them. It was overwhelmingly depressing.

I continue to stall on getting my hearing aids. I know that part of it is because I feel awkward much of time and as if other women are always more pulled together than I am. I’m the person whose nail polish gets chipped, whose hair gets frizzy, whose clothes get covered in lint and whose extra weight seems to show up more noticeably all within five minutes of leaving the house. I once sat through a job interview without realizing there was gum in my hair and that the underwire in my bra had popped out and through my sweater and was jutting forward like giant fishhook.  I haven’t wanted to deal with the idea that in addition to losing weight, taking care of my nails, exercising more, learning yoga, meditating, writing daily, learning how to draw, cooking better meals, saving the world, eliminating negative thinking and all the other things on my self-improvement list that I’d now have to add “hear better” to the mix.  The idea of dealing with hearing aids has just been too overwhelming. One more thing to make sure I have in order.

My husband is supportive.  We have closed captioning on when we watch movies and television. It can be hard for me to watch movies at other people’s homes unless they have the volume up.   I used to make my husband to repeat himself all the time by asking, “what?” every time he said something. The bad part was that before he could answer, I’d answer the question or comment on what he had said! He’d accuse me having “selective hearing” and was frustrated because he felt me asking him to repeat himself was a habit rather than a need. I talked to my audiologist about why this happens and he said it’s like reading a sentence that’s missing a few words. Most people read it and still get the gist. Well, the brain works the same way with hearing. Apparently, in the fraction of second it takes me to ask him to repeat himself, my brain has already filled in the gaps of what it was that he was likely to have said. This bit of information has helped because he realizes that I’m not half listening (Well, most of the time!)

I wish I would have started protecting my hearing years ago. I did telephone customer service wearing a  headsetswith the volume too loud for eight years and wonder if this caused the problem. I always listened to loud music all night long with headphones as a teenager and had no clue how this could damage my hearing.  The other day I heard owls by our house and that felt like a gift.