Progress Report: Twelve weeks

Newness is turning into familiarity and confidence in my hearing. Tentatively, I am beginning to make phone calls. Yesterday, I needed to talk to someone, and debated between walking to his desk or calling him. I decided to call. No problem. No problem at all.

Before, I couldn't listen to spoken word audio for any length of time. Now, I have finished 4 audiobooks, and countless podcasts, with an ever expanding queue of books I've always wanted to read. By now, I have logged dozens of hours listening to spoken word. Before, I avoided social situations and the inevitable frustration and boredom. Now, I can follow the conversation and have a good time. It is still challenging in noisy environments, but I persevere.

There is something called a "wow" moment, when you hear something and just go "wow" because you just can't believe you heard that. They come fast and furious at first, and then they taper off, but grow more spectacular. At first, my wow moments were like being able to crisply hear a door closing from a distance away, or the slight fluttering sound of a cat vigorously shaking its head from across the room. Now, the winning wow moment is when I was standing near a buddy in a parking lot, and someone 50 feet away was talking to him. Fifty feet away. I thought, "No way, you cannot hear that," and proceeded to listen. To my astonishment, I made out a couple of words, and confirmed them with my buddy.

I do still have difficult moments. Sometimes my mind is not able to grasp what I'm hearing, and speech comes in as nonsense. Those difficult moments remind me that I am not a hearing person. It is easy to forget, with the progress I've made. In twelve short weeks. And it will only get better.