Paper or Plastic?

Right now I got through my medicine and waiting to get the CAT Scan done sometime this month to check to see if the infection is there. If it is there, off to surgery we go. If not, I can then set the date of getting the cochlear implants. It is hard to believe that it has been five months, almost a half of a year of total silence! Since then I have struggled with communication more than I have ever had in my life! The biggest struggle is just going out to do errands! Let me explain one of the simple errands of getting groceries:

I am at the checkout with the two kids and a baby. The kids are helping me load the groceries onto the belt. Now in the past (with a hearing loss you sorta prepare yourself for things!) I have learned the person at the end of the belt will ask, "Plastic or Paper bags ma'am?" So I always look down there first to respond. Well this particular day, there was on one there, so I kept my eye down there waiting for that person to show up while loading the groceries and keeping my other eye on the kids and a baby! Sure enough a person showed up down there, but was just standing there and I was so upset with myself that I didn't catch her lips moving to respond! So I asked, "did you ask me paper or plastic?" To which she responded, no, and walked off. So I guess she wasn't the bag person and so I told the cashier, "oh I have a hearing loss." (after talking with hubby that night, he suggested that I say DEAF, after all, I do not have any hearing at all, I sorta need to be reminded of that nowadays!") So then I am unloading the groceries and see my oldest waving her arms to get my attention that the bag person wants to know paper or plastic. WHAT?! I missed it already?!!!

I know it really is not a big deal, but I guess to me as a person with a hearing loss I have always tried to live the "hearing" world. And it takes preparation! It is interesting that when I had a hearing loss I would try to be like a hearing person, now that I have no hearing, I am trying to be like a person with a hearing loss-how comical is that?! I know it would be easier on me to simply tell the person I am working with that I am deaf and then things could be better, but you wouldn't believe the look I get on people's face when I mention it because I speak so well that it is just hard to believe that I could be deaf! Sometimes we go into my "story" or other times I can just move on. So I am trying hard to remember communication is two people, so I need to inform the other so that we can have good communication. As I said before, I have gone through the grieving period of being deaf and now I am learning the acceptance/peace of being deaf and now anxious to get the ball rolling and get the implants so that I can confidently say, "Plastic please!"