November 6, 2015

19 Percent

19.1 percent. That’s the number of people with disabilities working in the US, compared to 68.2 percent without disabilities, according to United States Department of Labor’s September 2015 Disability Employment […]
October 25, 2015
dangers of hearing aid batteries for pets and children

How I Made My Dog Afraid of Thunderstorms

For the first 12 years of my life, I slept peacefully through the majority of thunderstorms. If I ever awoke, it was during a strike so violent everybody in the house […]
October 5, 2015

Don’t Eat my Hearing Aid!

One of the most common accidents with hearing aids is a pet thinking it’s lunch.* If you Google the phrase “pets eating hearing aids,” you will find endless articles and […]
September 29, 2015

When “Never Mind” Goes Both Ways

Stephanie Booth and I share a pet peeve: being told “Never mind, it’s not that important” after an individual repeats themselves a few times. Most people give up on trying to […]
August 16, 2015

Harry Potter and the Surprise Tympanoplasty

Since my eighth birthday, I had been waiting for the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I had become hopelessly addicted to the series after receiving Harry Potter […]
July 20, 2015

The Before and After of Biology Class

Anybody who asked me about biology six years ago would know my unwavering response: “I hate biology and can’t wait for it to be over!” Biology started strong with top […]
May 22, 2015

Let it Be: A Beatlemaniac’s Beacon Through Hearing Loss

This May marks 45 years since Let it Be, the Beatles’ last album, was released. My parents, who were 11 and 21 at the time, remember the album as the […]
May 11, 2015

Breaking the Surgery Mindset

For the past ten years, I believed I knew everything there was to know about making difficult decisions. In my mind’s eye, the hardest decision I had ever made was […]
April 9, 2015

The Name I Call Myself

Picking a term to describe our hearing is fraught with implications. The idea behind “hearing impaired” is that we are lesser human beings and must be fixed to function. Those […]
March 18, 2015

Dating with Hearing Loss: the Good, the Bad, and the Stories that Make You Say, “What?”

The audiologist will tell you many things when you get your first hearing aid. Keep it dry and don’t wear it with wet hair. Put it in a desiccating box, […]
February 9, 2015

Cheating the Test

It has been said that cheating is wrong, dishonorable, and hurtful towards others as well as yourself. The measurements for final scores become skewed, making the results incorrect for everyone, […]
December 19, 2014

The Day I Heard Santa Claus

It was 6 A.M. on Christmas morning. My brother, Doug, and I had woken up much earlier, but our parents said, “Don’t wake us up before six.” Each minute seemed […]
November 21, 2014

Hearing Things and Horror Movies

When I was thirteen years old, I loved horror movies. The scarier, the better. Bring on the bloodbath, and the ghosts and the ghouls. The louder you could scream, the […]
October 17, 2014

Parker: The Boy Who Taught Me About Shame

There are very few things about which I feel shame. Shame: “a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong and foolish behavior”. Note this: the […]
September 30, 2014

Now and Then: 10 Years with an Eardrum

If you had asked me how I envisioned my life on August 24th, 2004, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Heck, I wouldn’t have been able to say […]
September 6, 2014

Children of a Lesser God, Children of a Different Choice

“Do you think that we could find a place that we can meet, not in silence and not in sound?” James Leeds (William Hurt), a speech teacher, presents this question […]
August 29, 2014

“But I Don’t See You As Disabled!” The Flip Side of “But You Look so Normal!”

If someone finds out I’m hard of hearing, one common response is, “But you look so normal!” Since I first confronted that statement as a junior in college, I now […]
July 3, 2014

The Wash of Shame

It began with an ear infection and an early return from choir practice. My director sent me home after noticing that my energy levels were cut in half. Usually, I […]
June 16, 2014

What Can Hearing Impaired People Do to End Stigmas Against Mental Illness?

Have you strained so hard to hear that you collapse from fatigue, too exhausted move anything except your eyelids? Has conversation swirled into a vortex, put you in its eye […]
May 29, 2014

Mental Health and Hearing Loss

How does the stigma of mental illness affect hearing impaired people? Mental health problems, as well as being their own illness, can be a symptom of physical ailments. According to […]