When life overwhelms

Something that is often posed to me is the question how I function in such a noisy work environment. I chose teaching (and Drama teaching at that!) because I love it, quite simply, I didn't think my disability would get in the way. Of course I forgot to factor in hundreds of shrieking students that I deal with on a daily basis. It was definitely challenging in the beginning. Every new teacher needs to find their 'disapline sweet spot' ie; that spot where you can maintain discipline in the classroom without resorting to being a complete tyrant, but having boundaries so you aren't their friends. Like every new teacher this was a huge challenge, doubly so as I have a loud subject by nature so to keep the noise level at a point where I can cope was hard. However, five years later and I've gotten to the point where I manage okay.

But that doesn't mean I always cope. Working environments are quite simply not catered towards disabilities. This is not a critique of my job in no way, I have caring and understanding colleagues, but as I'm not very verbal about my problems, I often struggle without anyone realising. To give you an idea, let me take you through a day in the life of me:

I wake up at the crack of dawn to a buzzing phone on full volume I can barely hear. I go about my morning routine in almost silence. My house is my refuge, I don't see the need to wear my aids often around home as there isn't really anything I desperately need to hear. A bit later, my husband has been roused, breakfast made and consumed, and I pop in my aids. That is when my day really starts for me. Sound snaps into focus and I prepare myself for the drive into work.

The car. You know how you can hear all the sounds of your vehicle so you know when there are problems? Well, I can't. So I pray my car behaves and I don't have engine or tyre problems or else I wouldn't know until it was too late. I turn my radio on full volume so I can hear it and go to work. The nice thing is I don't tend to hear people hooting at me. The bad thing is that if an ambulance or blue light brigade come speeding up behind me, I have to be looking in my review mirror in order to move over for them.

Work. Now schools are NOISY places so I need to get to work early and spend an hour in blessed silence preparing myself mentally for the day. Ever been to a staff room? Well, they are NOT deaf friendly areas. I often miss out on important messages in the morning due to the large area and my inability to read lips from a long distance. And of course not everyone has a nice loud voice so often I have to bug my colleagues to repeat what goes on so I don't miss out. Staffroom conversations can be a nightmare. I try to restrict myself to talking to those next to me or opposite me. It's not being rude but with 20 different conversations going on around me I get completely overwhelmed by sound. Sometimes I'm so tired I just sit in silence as the effort of reading lips is often just too much. I don't blame my colleagues. They often just forget, or don't realise.

Then lessons. Yes, you can keep students quiet to a point but when they need to do group work or there are class discussions, there is only so much I can maintain. And practicals. Picture 25 teenage girls in a room all talking at once. The result? I don't hear a thing. I've trained my students to approach me to ask questions rather than ask from a distance. Now imagine the lipreading I do on a daily basis. Lipreading is not an exact science, it takes a lot of concentration and often I can interpret words wrong. Which leads to students having to repeat themselves a few times. Of course I have to make sure they're all working which leads to me reading 25 different lips on an hourly basis. Easy? Try doing it. Sometimes the noise gets so overwhelming I turn off my aids and rely solely on lipreading, nice to be able to turn off the world but hard work on the brain.

Back to staffroom for breaks. Noise. Sometimes really loud noise if we all in there at once. Overwhelming noise and more need for lipreading. Misunderstandings. Irritation.

Then lessons. And so it goes on. By 3pm I am exhausted. I drive the 25min home and collapse. My energy is spent. I take out my aids and spend the rest of the afternoon in quiet just to rest my brain. Hubby is used to this so it doesn't cause too many problems.

Next morning, it continues again. Weekends are filled with braais and restaurants where I have the same problems. It's hard. Hard hard hard. But what other choice do I have? I love my job and am happy with my choices but unfortunately it can be a lot harder on me than others in my position. End of term and I am shattered physically, noisy environments exhaust most hard of hearing individuals as we need to work harder.

So next time you see me looking tired, don't point it out. Give me a hug and a smile, sometimes it's all I need.

I'm back, with my dancing shoes on!

I started this blog last year and as life would have it, I forgot about it! I promise to be better at updating...

So what have I been up to in the meantime? The usual really. I had a rough week not so long ago that ended with a frustrating phone call to my medical aid which resulted in full blown tears on my side because I couldn't hear them! Why can't all businesses have a text/email address for the Deaf/HoH??? I'd love to know... but I'll cover that in later posts.

I'd like to share my latest accomplishment with you all. I've mentioned before that I dance. Well dancing is something I gave up when I was younger due to my frustration at never being flexible or balanced enough. I've also never had the typical 'dancer body' and my self-consciousness and anxiety led to me pretending for years that I was useless to get out of having to dance. In hindsight, I should have never given up so easily. The stage was truly my home and it would've helped an awful lot in my acting career being able to dance as well! But when my hearing dropped dramatically in high school, I all but abandoned my love for dance, knowing that not being able to hear the beat would affect me.

Well, post university, I found myself hobby-less and desperate for an outlet. I found an adult ballet class and joined. I flittered between dance schools, never quite feeling comfortable in the classes I was in. But one thing it did do was reignite my passion for dance. Unfortunately at the end of 2015 I fell down a flight of stairs, badly injuring my neck, wrist and ankle. I was out of dancing for 6 months and in that time my husband and I moved to a new part of town and I could no longer attend class at the studio I was at. By chance a friend mentioned to me that she knew of a studio in my suburb! Eager, I joined the ballet class and this year, I ventured back into modern.

I cannot explain how amazing being part of these classes has been. They are painstakingly patient with me, despite my lack of balance  (darn inner ear damage) and me not hearing the music! I really started to thrive again, loving dancing despite it all. I'm with the most amazing group of ladies, we are all so different but are joined by our love for dance.

Then the unthinkable happened, a freak accident which resulted in the same ankle being badly injured with nerve damage. Honestly I sometimes just wonder why ME. Being back in a moon boot and crutches for over 10 weeks was soul destroying. Being disabled in one way is bad enough. Temporarily disabled in another way was no picnic. I felt just so utterly HELPLESS. I was bedrest for a while and got quite depressed.

But here's the crazy thing about me, I don't give up that easily. My dance studio had it's yearly show coming up end of August and I just KNEW that I had to be in it. Bearing in mind that my injury occurred in March so honestly, most people didn't think I could do it... and really, neither did I until about a month before. But post-injury rehab is a real thing, so is getting yourself up after you've fallen (in my case, way to literally at times!) And all I needed to do was put my mind to it. Being disabled has taught me that I really can do anything if I'm determined and stubborn enough, and BOY am I stubborn!

So the 26 August came and there I was. Walking, dancing, performing. Disability, injury and all, I was there. I performed in FOUR numbers and yes, by the end my foot was KILLING me but it was all worth it. I performed far better than I thought I would and proved to myself that there is nothing the world can tell me I can't do.

So my question today is, What is holding YOU back from doing what you love? Disabilities can be a real issue but there are ways of still accomplishing them. Hey, if the girl who got called 'fall-apart' in school can dance and perform, I don't see why you can't.

Speaking with hands

Something that I haven't really spoken about until now is South African Sign Language. SASL is the primary language for Deaf South Africans. Right now there is a massive push to have it as the 12th official language of our country. Why? Well, when your country already has 11 official languages, leaving out one that is so vital to the Deaf community is just wrong on so many levels. SASL isn't even offered as a first language option in schools and only schools for the Deaf even offer it as a subject, despite the fact that inclusive education means that all schools should technically cater for this. I remember doing my teaching diploma and coming across TWO pages of SASL to equip a teacher in the classroom. TWO pages people. That's like me reading and learning our National Anthem and claiming I know Zulu and Xhosa. 

My Hubby and I are not fluent in SASL. Many reasons. Firstly, we were both sent to mainstream schools which meant we never learnt SASL until we became interested in it post high school. Secondly, as we work in a hearing environments we don't get to use it that often. In saying that, we CAN still sign and communicate in sign, but due to lack of practise I'm a bit rusty at the moment! We often sign to each other in noisy situations, even if we forget the signs, we still somehow understand each other.

So, fellow blog readers. My challenge is for YOU to learn some sign. Practise it, teach your friends, go buy an SASL dictionary. The more we spread the word, the more we can push for this to be our 12th official language.

What are you waiting for? 

It's been one of those weeks

What my aid looks like inside, so cool!

Here's the thing. My hearing aids are vitally important for me to be able to work and function. So when one decides to bomb out my life grinds to a horrific halt. Last week Thursday I was cleaning my right aid before work and the tubing crumbled. This is one of those nasty maintenance inconveniences that occur with aids. Except my hearing aid company can take up to four days to repair it, especially when it's near a weekend. And of course it just HAD to happen the week I had about a hundred practical assessments to do. Here's the funny thing about life though, you just have to make it work. Taking sick leave for a broken hearing aid is just not worth it. So, I stuck my left one in and hoped for the best.

The problem with only having one aid is that you feel HORRIBLY off-balanced. I'm not lying when I say that I crash into EVERYTHING when my hearing aids are out or I only have one in. My legs are a road-map of bruises at the moment from desks and cars. Don't get me started about how disastrous my ballet lesson was last Thursday... to give you an idea, ballet relies a LOT on balance... I looked like an elephant trying to balance on a Pilate's ball. Horrific.

Apart from the lack of balance I lost all peripheral hearing. So I can HEAR people talking to me but I have NO idea where it's coming from. Frustrating to say the least. Let's not get started about how tiring it is. My left ear has been basically doing the job of both, which means increased concentration for my brain and lots of confusing sound so I have to rely solely on lipreading. It is EXHAUSTING. I've been coming home feeling like I've been steamrolled simply for one pretty average working day. Yet, what else am I meant to do? The reality is, I need to work, and as long as I have one functioning aid, I'll be okay.

So what happens when neither work? Well, then that's it in terms of my functionality. Last year I sent one of my aids in for repairs. I woke up the next morning, reached for my remaining aid to find it gone. Cue hysterics. After frantic searching for an hour in tears, I had to message my boss explaining the situation as I could not call the school to explain (joys of hearing loss). Imagine being so completely helpless that you are tied to your house because your disability prohibits you? It's so frustrating. I sat down to do lesson prep and marking instead, angry as anything that I had lost my aid. Two hours later I was looking through my handbag for something and voila! Hearing aid! Turns out my cat had knocked it into my bag during the night. Mad rush to work, exhausted, and then had to carry on as usual.

Then there's the times my aid runs out of batteries. Hearing aid batteries last +/- 10 days depending on the aid and battery that you use. That's two new batteries every 10 days, often less. Our batteries are disposable and come in packs of 6. So basically every 3 weeks I need to restock as they are expensive and I can't afford to buy in bulk. So naturally, I run out quite often and forget to buy more! They run out at the most inconvenient times, often in the middle of teaching, so I've become skilled at changing them fast. Problem is, when I forget to buy more it's a mad dash to the nearest chemist, and since certain brands last longer I can't just buy any battery! Frustrating? Tell me about it. 

So enough complaining! My right aid was fixed and I fetched it yesterday. It's amazing how less tired I'm feeling already. Such a small thing and such a huge difference. People don't understand though, this whole week I've had comments from students and colleagues how tired I looked (gee thanks?). Thing is, it's hard to explain how one aid missing can make such a huge difference in my hearing and balance. After I picked it up yesterday, I literally shoved it into my ear and sighed with pleasure because it's like the world snapped back into focus again.

Note to self... Get aids serviced during holidays only!  

2 x HoH = Interesting times

So I've mentioned my long - suffering husband in previous posts, but something I haven't spoken about is the fact that we share something large in common... he's also hard of hearing!  I give him full credit for keeping me sane with this disability,  there's something extremely comforting about the fact that he knows exactly how I am feeling in certain situations without me saying a thing.

Some background : Hubby has profound bilateral hearing loss (if you remember from my previous posts that means he has a 90+ decibel loss in both ears, so quite a lot more than me). He wears two behind the ear hearing aids which largely help him to function normally however he struggles a LOT more than I do in noisy situations. To put it into perspective he is completely deaf without his aids in unlike me who can hear noise still. Yet, he plays rugby, coaches and is a primary school teacher so like me, he loves to challenge the stereotype. You can usually tell he's HoH as he has that 'Deaf accent' I spoke about before.

While it's great having someone who understands what I'm going through it leads to an interesting home life.  Like the fact that I can have entire conversations with him before I realise he hasn't heard a word I said because his aids were out. Or shouting matches from different rooms. My favourite saying to him is "stop being deaf, it's just rude" which leads to open mouth reactions from others but we just laugh about it. An entire tornado can rip through our house at night and he'd sleep peacefully through, so the dog has learnt I'm a better target if he needs to go out at night! (I often wake up Hubby to do this so I don't have to. My favourite is that it is dark so he can't see me and yet he asks me questions that he can't hear the answer to, leaving me gesticulating wildly shouting even though I know he can't hear me). It also gives him the excuse when watching rugby to say he didn't hear me because he's deaf. Except as most women will agree with me on, there's a big difference between hearing and LISTENING!

It's mostly through Hubby that I've been introduced to the extreme prejudices of society. I often operate as his ears and mouthpiece out in public as I am a fluent lipreader while he isn't. It doesn't mean he can't do things without me,  it just means things go faster if I do the talking. But what frustrates me is when people realise his disability and then ignore him only focusing on me. A good example,  we were at a local pet food store buying food for our fur children. We get to the counter and Hubby gives the lady his card. She asked him which account he wanted and due to her quiet voice he asked her to repeat herself.  When he missed it for the second time,  I stepped in and repeated it louder for his sake. From that moment the cashier completely ignored him,  giving me the machine for the pin (which I handed to him) and then giving the card back to me (handed to him again). I was really confused before I realised that she just saw me as the easier option. It happens quite a lot when we go out and I get more and more annoyed. Ignorance is insulting, deaf does not equal dumb and disabilities do not make you helpless. I just wish more people would understand this.

Because life has a funny side too

I've often been asked to share my funniest stories around my disability. See, here's the thing, I am HIGHLY sarcastic. I feel as society gets more ignorant, my natural survival instinct is to turn to sarcasm. So often this can lead to some pretty funny situations around my disability. Other stories arise from my job, my hobbies and many more. Here are my top 3:

STORY 1

(person calls something to me from across the room)
Me: "huh?"
(person repeats themselves)
Me: "Sorry?"
 (person now getting really frustrated)
"OH MY WORD ARE YOU DEAF OR SOMETHING?"
...
...
...
Me: "Well you see... yeah. I am"
(Awkward silence)

STORY 2

Some of you may know that I studied a degree in Drama and Perfomance studies which included lots of stage time as an actress. In a play I was in, one of the scenes involved my co-actor grabbing my head and throwing me to the floor (Greek tragedy thing, don't ask). During one of our performances, he grabbed me and as he did, my hearing aid popped out. Now I'm a pretty seasoned performer, so I didn't break character but in my head I'm thinking "OMG OMG what am I going to do, how am I going to hear my cues, what if he stands on it, that R15000!". The poor guy had no idea what happened so he flung me to the floor and strode off... Now I had two choices, break role and search frantically, or try to just go on. So what did I do, I carried on of course! As I stood up to go weeping back to my platform, I spy my aid lying on the floor. In a dramatic flourish, I swooped down and plucked my aid from the floor and popped it in my ear, staying in character the whole time. My own mother in the audience didn't even realise what happened! Still count that as the smoothest thing I've ever done. 

STORY 3

Lipreading is a VERY useful skill to have as a teacher. It's one of the times where my 'disability' turns into a huge ability. I always joke with my grade 8s at the beginning of the year saying they've got to be careful what they say at the back because I can see everything. Not even 5min after saying this, I'm explaining how I'll keep them in at break if they haven't done their homework and I see a girl whispering to her friend "no she wouldn't, she's just trying to scare us" and mid paragraph I whip my head round and say "yes actually I would, don't test me" only to have the whole class look at me open mouthed. I shrugged and went "it's my superpower"... one whisper from the back "cooool". 

Let's be politically correct...

So here's the thing.  Around disabilities the topic about political correctness comes up. You know,  the fact that I'm not hearing impaired, I'm hard of hearing... or that someone isn't short, they're vertically challenged (okay maybe not that last one), but it's true that society has become so caught up with being politically correct that they don't realise THAT is not the issue. Mocking, diminishing... those are my gripes. People say "don't take me so seriously" but would they feel the same if the tables are turned? We say, oh they just being politically incorrect but there is a difference between that and just being insulting, insensitive and plain rude.

Asking if I read braille? That's not politically incorrect, that's insulting.

Covering your mouth when you speak to test me? It's not a joke that's rude.

Asking how it was possible that I have a degree with a disability? That's not ignorance, that's being diminishing.

Saying you know sign language and then pulling a rude finger sign? That's not funny it's insulting.

Slowing down and using easier words because I ask you to repeat what you said? That's belittling.

Whispering something and when I ask you to repeat you say never mind? That's hurtful.

Rolling your eyes and sighing when I've asked you to repeat something for the 5th time? That's rude.

Inviting me somewhere extremely noisy and then getting annoyed when I don't join in or leave early? That's insensitive.

Calling me brave and other adjectives because I continue to perform adequately in my everyday life is not a compliment. Am I meant to roll over and give up?

I'm not saying you need to tiptoe around disabilities, because that's not what this is about. I'm happy to chat and explain my problem and share my stories, but I'm not here to be the butt of a joke at a dinner party. It's NOT entertaining to make light or fun of someones problems, so why make fun of mine? Yes, I tell funny stories and share little anecdotes about my life because you need to laugh in life. There is a huge difference between gentle teasing when you know the person well and plain old belittling, mocking and insulting. So think next time before you ask a stupid question or make a joke about someones disability: Would you find it funny if you had to live with that and it was directed towards you?

My worst thing I've ever been told was actually by someone who had no idea how insulting they were being. I guess everyone says things without thinking but the fact that they didn't even realise that it hurt was the hardest thing. I got told that "you not REALLY disabled because like, you are pretty normal and your hearing problem isn't that much of a big deal, people have it far worse". Yeah. I'm well aware that people have worse problems than me. There is ALWAYS someone who has it worse. Does that make it any easier?

I once read a story about a man who had to carry a huge rock up a mountain. He picked it up, and carried it, but it was heavy and he struggled. He continued up, stopping along the way, with each step it felt heavier but he persevered. When he reached the top he found a whole crowd of people who had also carried their rocks up the mountain. Each rock was a different size, a different shape, a different weight, yet every person had struggled along their own journey. That mountain is a bit like life. We all have our own rocks, our own burdens to carry, just because they are different does not make it any easier for that person.My burden is my hearing, and yes, to me, it's a pretty big burden. Maybe to someone else it is small, but they aren't the ones carrying them.