Today, I had a VERY good training session with the speech therapist at the Student with Disabilities Office at Edinboro University that the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation has training me to use Dragon Naturally Speaking at work due to my hearing loss. As I soar through some parts and struggle through others, we talked about my hearing loss. I broke down as I shared how difficult it is having a hearing loss and being a therapist. How exhausting it is to use so much energy every day to try and hear what others are saying. I explained to her about starting Topamax and how it affected my hearing and how it affected my ability to wear my hearing aides and she understood! I shared with her how angry I get when people assume they can tell what I can and cannot hear or how easy it should be for me to hear, or because I am not wearing my hearing aides that I must not need them! How I get angry that people dont know about my years of speech therapy and my thousands of hours of speech therapy drills at home. She just smiled and said that people were ignorant and because I have worked so hard, the average person would not be able to pick up on my hearing loss unless I was wearing my hearing aides, but it would be very evident to anyone with any speech and language training. One of the main reasons why I dont socialize very much anymore is the fact that I cannot wear my hearing aides right now. It wipes me out listening to others. I get through my work day and thats about all I can do. My medical therapist has been working on some cool stuff with me that has some promise. My talk and cry during training with Sharon today was long overdue and very encouraging! 💙
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 02:32:56 +0000