May 24:  Late that night I walked in the door after a wonderful overnight getaway with my hubby, and hugged my 20-year-old son.  I realized that I couldn’t hear what he was saying and that I couldn’t hear what my husband was saying either.  I could tell there was talking, but it was faint and unintelligible.  I’ve had issues with my hearing for a number of years, but I’ve always been able to hear my husband, Chet, and my son, Cody, fairly well even without my hearing aids .  This was not good.  I went to bed hoping it would be fine by morning.  I’ve had “weirdness” with my hearing before and had it clear up.  Hopefully that would be all it was.  The next morning Chet and I sat down to have coffee and I couldn’t follow a single sentence of what he was saying…not even up close, watching his mouth and with him speaking very loudly and repeating things.  I had that feeling you get when something serious has happened – not panic or upset. The eerily calm feeling you get when you know it’s serious. I realized that my life had just been changed in the blink of an eye.   Chet called the doctor for me (my very specialized specialist!) and I was seen on an emergency basis.  Sometimes when you have an episode of SSHL (please see my story page for an explanation of what this is) if you get treatment fast enough some hearing can be saved.  I’ve never recovered any hearing once it has been lost even with aggressive treatment, but it’s always worth a try.  I had a steroid injection directly into my eardrum and was put on a high dose of oral steroids, plus a controversial treatment of an anti-viral drug.  The doctor wanted to “pull out all the stops” since this loss was so dramatic and clearly life changing.  After the injection, I had to wait 24 hours to wear my hearing aids again.  Without them, I am close to deaf.  I hear some sound, but there is very little that I am able to decipher and make sense of.  At that point, I honestly didn’t know if I would be able to hear anything even with my hearing aids in.  The audiologist tried to adjust them to my new hearing levels at the clinic, but only as a stop-gap until the doctor decided to stop treatment and my hearing was considered stable.  No fine tuning was done, just a basic “turn it up as loud as you can”  adjustment.  That first day I remained calm and I think mostly I just had to wrap my brain around the concept that this really did happen.  I’ve known it was in the realm of possibility for a while now, but in the past I’ve had other symptoms that I’ve come to associate with these episodes of hearing loss and this time there was no warning at all.  One moment I was fine, then next I was nearly deaf.  I began to realize the implications of this change.  I couldn’t hear the phone ring.  I couldn’t hear my kids walk in the door.  I couldn’t really understand anything, even up close and face to face.  I couldn’t hear my own voice – it was very faint.  The next morning we had a planned ladies’ activity at church.  The time coincided with the window of time when I could try my hearing aids.  One of my friends texted me and asked if I’d like to have lunch after the activity.  I agreed, not knowing if I’d be able to have a conversation or not.  I felt nervous about trying to interact with people, but I’ve always had a sense of adventure and that was the feeling I had on that morning, too.  I’ll dive in and see what happens!  If I’m too loud, we’ll have a laugh and someone will help me figure it out!  We’ll play charades if necessary!  Once I arrived at the church building, I put the hearing aids in.  I could follow some conversation!!!!  It was difficult and even when I could understand the words, the voices were very distorted.  Have you ever seen a tv program where a kidnapper calls with his ransom demands and uses a voice scrambler of some kind?  That’s what it reminds me of.  The human qualities of the voice are mostly gone for me now.  I feel like I’m speaking to a computer or machine all of the time.  Occasionally, when I’m one on one with someone, I can distinguish a characteristic that would allow me to recognize whose voice it is, but mostly it’s very monotone, very distorted, and very mechanical.  Surprisingly, initially there was no sadness or upset at all.  I honestly felt a tremendous sense of gratitude!  I really did.  I was unbelievably grateful to God that I was able to follow some conversation and that the hearing aids did help, even though it was still very difficult to hear.  I felt gratitude for the wonderful support system I have.  I knew that my family and friends would do whatever was necessary to show me love and support during this time.  I would not be alone and I was incredibly grateful for that.  I found it easy to look at this as just a new path on the road of my life.  I was put on this path and there was no decision to be made.  I trust that God is in control and I have no qualms or anxiety about following the path I’ve been put on.  It will be a good path full of blessings that I probably can’t even imagine right now.  I’ve always prayed that God would use me however He saw fit, and I believe this is how He chose to answer that prayer.  I don’t know yet how I will go about my work in the kingdom, but I know that I will go about it.  I know that there will be a big adjustment time for me and my entire family.  I know that there will be good days and difficult ones.  I have no problem looking at the big picture and knowing that this is not a tragedy, only a change.  I imagine that there will be a grieving period for what has been lost, but that will pass.    I’ll figure out what technology is out there to help me function as well as I possibly can.  I’ll learn sign language or do some formal training in speech-reading (formerly called lip-reading) or whatever it takes.  I love to research things online and there is a vast amount of information and technology to acquaint myself with.  It’s overwhelming at times to deal with so many new things at once, and it’s truly exhausting, but I will pace myself as needed (maybe even allow a nap or two!) and I will figure this out.