"Homeless Tequila"
I have bounded into the silent living room and found
my hard-of-hearing husband Brandt sitting in his recliner, watching Mythbusters on
television. It’s on mute, and he is
concentrating on the closed-captioning text scrolling across the screen. I yell “Hi honey!” to announce my presence.
Unable to hear my approaching footsteps, he has
responded—as usual—to my loud salutation by jumping in his seat and screaming
in terror.
“Hang on, I’m Earless!” he grumbles from his recliner,
reaching for the beige hearing aids sitting on the coffee table. As he pops them in, he pictures himself as
Mr. Potato Head, inserting his comically large plastic ears.
To make amends, I cheerfully screech, “Oh honey,
you’re so cute!”
A mixture of pain and confusion pulls down his
face. “Why am I ‘Homeless Tequila’?” he
asks.
I stammer, laughing, “Wh—What?!”
Near tears, he continues. “Why would you call me that?! I would never call you something
like that! That’s just mean, how would
you feel if I greeted you like that?”
This wasn’t our first
big misunderstanding, but it was by far the worst. Or was
it the best? Well, it was certainly
the funniest.
Brandt and I had been
together for a few years at that point, and he’d been wearing hearing aids for
several years before we met. He first
noticed a problem during his senior year of high school, and was diagnosed with
mild hearing loss (about the decibel level of a loud whisper). But it was graduate school before he accepted
that he could no longer function without hearing aids.
His hearing loss wasn’t
an issue for me, because, by fate, luck, or random chance, I had spent my
entire life connected to people with hearing loss. Aunt Louise, my great-aunt, godmother, and
namesake, went deaf at age 20 from an antibiotic and became a legend in the
hearing loss community. She helped
establish the Arkansas Deaf Relay (one of the first in the country) and was a
well-known advocate for captioning and other issues vital to people with
hearing loss. In 2004 she became the
first adult in the state to have bilateral Cochlear Implants (commonly called
“CIs”)—surgically implanted electronic devices that digitally replace hearing
in deaf people who do not benefit from hearing aids, which can only amplify
sound. My Grandma Jean also had a
hearing loss, caused by a childhood bout with scarlet fever. Her hearing was restored by the same
world-renowned UAMS surgeon who implanted Aunt Louise’s Cochlear Implants. And my good friend of 10 years, Josie, was
born with severe hearing loss and has worn hearing aids all her life.
But I quickly learned
that being in a relationship with someone with a hearing loss is a lot different
from having a family member or close friend with it. It affects just about every aspect of our life
together.
We avoided parties and
busy restaurants because it was impossible for Brandt to communicate with
anyone, including me. At my family’s big
holiday gatherings, he would run off to a quiet corner and play on his cell
phone.
We couldn’t see movies
in the theater near our house in Memphis because there weren’t any captioned showings. I surprised him with tickets for the new Star Trek’s opening weekend—the closest
showing with captions was four hours away in Nashville. That was a long drive just to see a movie, but it was worth it.
Music all but
disappeared from my life, since it was “distracting background noise” in the
car, the house, and at friends’ dinner parties.
I got in the habit of asking the hostess if she’d mind turning off the
satellite radio, because Brandt couldn’t understand anyone with it
playing.
My beloved live theater
and musicals disappeared as well, since the closest theater that offered
captioning was 800 miles away in Minneapolis—way too far to drive. It was torturous living so close to touring
Broadway productions, and not being able to attend any of them, but it was
pointless to spend $100 on a show that he couldn’t understand, and I would feel
too guilty laughing with the rest of the audience while he wondered what
hilarious joke he had just missed.
But the biggest
problem, by far, was the misunderstandings.
After the “Homeless Tequila” incident, I told Brandt that he needed to
get his hearing checked. He came back
from his audiologist appointment announcing that his hearing was “just the
same,” and he didn’t need it tested. I
had a hard time believing it, but didn’t push the issue. The misunderstandings continued, multiplying
in frequency.
Dancing into the living
room one Saturday afternoon, I excitedly shouted that I had cured my
hiccups.
Brandt looked down at
the wide flares of my jeans, horrified, yelling, “You cut your pants off?!”
Driving up to Brandt’s
high school gymnasium for his ten-year reunion, I asked, “Does this bring back
a lot of memories?”
“Does it bring back ovaries?!” he asked in disbelief.
Talking about dinner
one night, I suggested we have steak.
“I—what?!” Brandt exclaimed.
“A steak. You know, red
meat? Why, what did you hear?” I
asked.
“I thought you said
that I STANK!”
“No, actually you smell
really good! I said steak, or really, anything that comes from a cow.”
“How about a wallet?”
he asked, smirking.
And my whispered (and
not-so-whispered) “I love you’s” were increasingly met with blank stares and no
response.
After several painfully
long moments, he would finally ask, “Wait, what did you say?”
This went on for more
than a year, and I again asked Brandt to go to the audiologist for a hearing
test. Again, he came home saying it was
“still just the same.”
This time, I didn’t
believe it. I held out my hand and asked
for the results of his test.
“Well, he didn’t do a real hearing test. He played some beeps, and I could hear them
fine, so he said I didn’t need a full hearing test.”
I may not have a degree
in audiology, but I knew this couldn’t be right. So I asked Aunt Louise, Grandma Jean, and my
friend Josie what they thought about the situation, and the response from all
three was a resounding “GET HIS HEARING TESTED!”
I sent Brandt back to
his audiologist, again, and he came back without a hearing test, again, with
the explanation that “my hearing hasn’t changed, my brain is just getting old
now that I’m almost 30, and I can’t process sounds as fast.”
I’d had enough. I called to make an appointment for Brandt
with Aunt Louise and Grandma Jean’s ENT surgeon, whom we affectionately call
“Dr. Awesome.” His waiting list was a year
long, and no amount of name-dropping could get us in any faster.
In the meantime, I decided to educate
myself as much as possible. I became
certified as a Hearing Loss Support Specialist, learning everything I could
about hearing tests, disability law, and assistive technologies.
And I started learning
American Sign Language, thinking that it would help reduce our
misunderstandings. Unfortunately, Brandt
was too busy teaching full-time and attending classes for his doctorate to
attend ASL classes. I decided to take
them alone, and try to teach him the signs at home. It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, since he
wasn’t actively studying and practicing the words. The misunderstandings continued to worsen.
One night while Brandt
was grading papers, I asked him, “Why are you grumbling, honey?”
With a hurt look on his
face, he responded, “I’m not ugly!”
I was a little taken
aback. “Of course you’re not ugly,
you’re adorable! I asked why you were GRUMBLING.”
“Oh!” he said,
laughing. “I’m grumbling because I’m tired, but I have to finish grading before I
can go to bed. By the way, ears SUCK!”
We started relying on
text messages for grocery shopping, after talking on the phone turned into me
screaming the same word ten times:
“You need me to pick up
hot dogs at Kroger?… No?… You’re not saying ‘hot dogs’?… It sounds like ‘hot dogs’… Hot.
Dogs… What do hot dogs have to do
with Italian food?… Oh, PASTA!”
And it became nearly
impossible to have a conversation when he was “Earless.” I used to simply talk louder to overcome his
lack of hearing aids, but now, even if he cupped his hands behind his ears and
concentrated on reading my lips, he could only get a few words. When he started to reach for his hearing
aids, I’d wave my hand and say, “Nevermind, it’s not important. I’ll just tell you later….”
Finally,
the long-awaited appointment with Dr. Awesome arrived. First Brandt had to have a complete hearing
test; the audiologist couldn’t believe that it hadn’t been tested in six years. I told her the story about “his brain’s just
getting old” from his last doctor, and she was horrified.
Brandt sat inside a
little booth, raising his hand when he heard beeps, and repeating back
words. At least, he attempted to repeat back words.
“Hot
dog,” she said.
Uh-oh, he’s going to say “pasta,” I thought
to myself.
“Oprah?”
he asked. “I know you couldn’t be saying
‘Oprah,’ but it sounds like ‘Oprah’!”
The
next word was “baseball.”
“Muumuu?”
he asked. “Again, I know you couldn’t
have just said ‘muumuu,’ but I swear that’s what it sounded like!”
“Cowboy,”
she said.
“‘Oprah’
again?!” he asked, exasperated.
The
results of the test were distressing.
Brandt’s hearing loss had nearly doubled over the past six years—from an
average loss of 40 decibels, to 70. And
his Speech Discrimination was even worse.
He had dropped from getting 99% of the words correct, to only 24%. I started crying, for two reasons. First, I was devastated. And second, I was relieved to find out that
I’d been right all along.
After
the testing, we met with Dr. Awesome, who has a hearing loss himself. He predicted that Brandt would probably go
completely deaf within five years, and would be a candidate for Cochlear
Implants. For now, he was “in the Gray
Area” and would have to be equipped with $10,000 worth of hearing technologies
to (possibly) help him function until he becomes a Cochlear Implant
candidate. We left the appointment in
shock—he was going to get a Cochlear
Implant in only 5 years? Aunt Louise
was shocked as well—she thought he was already a candidate and was disappointed
that he had to wait that long!
Brandt’s
beige hearing aids that fit inside his ears were replaced with powerful
cobalt-blue ones that sit behind his ears.
He got a Bluetooth transmitter that sends his cell phone and other audio
devices directly into the hearing aids.
And he acquired a personal FM microphone system, which can either be
worn around a speaker’s neck, or placed on a table. When I wear it, it sits right on my
cleavage. I get a lot of curious stares
directed at my chest.
I
was enthusiastic about all this new stuff,
sure that it would increase Brandt’s comprehension and decrease our
misunderstandings. Alas, that was not
the case. Each of the pieces of
technology broke at least once and had to be sent back to the company for repairs. We couldn’t go more than a month without
having to drive in for another adjustment or repair—that’s 23 trips to Little
Rock and back in less than 18 months, just for audiologist appointments.
And those
misunderstandings? Well, they didn’t get
any better. In fact, I’m positive they
got worse.
Sitting on the couch
watching a (captioned) movie, I yelled “Don’t move!” as I reached up to remove
a stray eyelash stuck to Brandt’s cheek.
Thinking I had
exclaimed “What’s that?!” instead, he
quickly turned toward me, and my long fingernail jabbed him in the eye. Luckily it didn’t do any lasting damage, but
it definitely hurt him.
When a waiter or waitress asked for
our drink and food orders, I answered first so that Brandt would know what the
question was. This didn’t solve all our
problems, since Brandt always nods
his head in agreement when they say something, assuming that the question is
“How is everything?” (even if the question was actually, “Do you need anything
else?”, “Did you want dessert?”, or, once, “Do you own the black BMW in the
parking lot?” The waitress kept
complimenting his fancy vehicle, but wondered why he wasn’t concerned that his
headlights were on).
We
had to wait another year for Brandt’s checkup with Dr. Awesome. One month before his appointment, Aunt Louise
passed away unexpectedly. The only thing
that held me together was focusing on the upcoming appointment, and I became obsessed with the idea of Brandt getting
a Cochlear Implant.
I was convinced that
his hearing and comprehension had gotten worse, but the tests proved me
wrong. Despite the lack of decline, Dr.
Awesome wondered if Brandt’s understanding and functioning could improve with a
Cochlear Implant in his worse ear, and hearing aid in his better ear. He sent us off for an evaluation.
I
tried to keep my expectations low, but I desperately wanted him to be approved
for the surgery. Aunt Louise’s life had
completely changed after getting her Cochlear Implants—she had even started
attending the Symphony shortly before her death, and could pick out each
instrument being played.
After
two hours of beeps and words, it all came down to the final test: Sentence Perception in Best-Aided Condition
(wearing hearing aids). If he scored
better than 60% on the sentences, Brandt couldn’t be a Cochlear Implant
candidate. I wasn’t worried; I knew he
wouldn’t do very well. I had 5 years’
worth of misunderstandings to back me up!
But
he did do well. Really well. Even though he
repeated each word slowly, hesitantly, and ended each sentence with,
“but-that-couldn’t-possibly-be-right,” he was right. Out of ten sentences, he only missed five
words. 90%.
The audiologist
conducting the evaluation said afterwards, shaking her head, “Ok, you did a
little too well on that test…WAY too well, actually. You’re not a Cochlear Implant candidate. Not even close.”
The room started
spinning, and I could feel the tears pooling in my eyes. I tried to explain that there’s no way he
could have done that well—didn’t she notice how unsure he was repeating the
words? And what about all those misunderstandings?!
None of my protests
made a difference. Our long list of misunderstandings
didn’t matter; all that counted was his 90% in the testing booth. A three-minute test sent all my hopes
crashing down. We will have to wait at
least a year before he can be reevaluated.
A few days later, when
I’d calmed down just slightly, I asked Brandt how he felt about the
evaluation. He shrugged, and in his
ever-so-calm way, said, “Eh, I’ll get a Cochlear Implant eventually. I just feel sorry for you, having to deal
with my crappy hearing. But at least you
get to keep adding to that long list of my misunderstandings!”
So we’re still stuck in
the Gray Area of hearing loss, where Italian food is made with hot dogs, high
school reunions bring back ovaries, and the ultimate insult is calling Brandt
an ugly, stinky Homeless Tequila.
