[NFB-DB] Initial experiences with first pair of hearing aids. Piece I wrote just for…

[Gerardo Corripio]

So I just realized I had as a souvenir my first pair of hearing aids, and so got inspired in writing this little piece; enjoy!

What Was That?: When I Learned to Hear Again

I was born at 28 weeks premature, and like many babies of that era, my blindness resulted from the high concentrations of oxygen used in incubators. However, until I was six or seven years old, I heard perfectly normally. Over the years, people have asked whether I have Usher syndrome or another condition that caused my hearing loss. It is believed that my hearing loss resulted from untreated ear infections, since back then I practically lived in the swimming pool.

I remember summer nights listening to crickets through the window. Or the excitement, at five years old, when I heard a carpet vacuum cleaner for the very first time—I had never heard anything like it before. But my hearing loss came so gradually that neither my family nor I noticed… until the school alerted my parents.

The morning of Wednesday, October 8, 1986, just weeks before my ninth birthday, seemed like any other morning. We had an appointment for my first hearing aids. Honestly, I did not think much about it… because as far as I knew, I heard just fine.

I could not have been more mistaken.

Once the hearing aids were fitted (a pair of Siemens C407C, G3) I suddenly heard people walking down the hallway. The office was inside a medical center, and I had never noticed those sounds before. Then we went down to the underground parking garage to get the car… so much noise! Everything felt overwhelming, almost like standing inside a factory with every machine running at once.

The truth is, we do not hear only with our ears; the brain also needs time to adapt and learn how to listen—whether it is the first time using hearing aids or when switching to a newer model with more advanced technology. So only minutes after receiving my hearing aids, my poor brain was already in overflow mode.

When we arrived home, I heard my baby sister crying. “What radio is that?” I asked. It was music my parents had playing in their bedroom… and I had not even noticed it before. While my mother warmed up lunch, I discovered an entirely new world of sound: dishes and pans clattering together. Even my own voice sounded different.

Because it was my first time using hearing aids, I was advised to take them off for a while that afternoon.

And then came the silence.

A silence that frightened me deeply.

I thought that perhaps, in just those few hours, I had lost the hearing I still had left. I remember picking up a small tape recorder—one of those many blind children carried everywhere to capture everyday sounds and details—and recording my voice and the sounds around me. When I played it back, everything sounded “like before.” That was the moment I truly understood the real extent of my hearing loss, which, throughout more than forty years of using hearing aids, has remained stable.

From that day on, my hearing aids stopped being an accessory and became an integral part of my life. Without them, I feel lost and disoriented, as though an essential window to the world were missing.

Over the years, I learned something else: sound needs balance. When hearing aids do not work in harmony—for example, one digital and one analog, or devices with very different technologies—everything can sound strange, uneven, and unnatural. Those of us who wear hearing aids know that wanting two devices of the same model or with compatible programming is not mere preference; our brains are trying to merge two sound worlds into a single auditory experience.

I also learned that deafblindness does not always mean a complete absence of sight and hearing, as many people imagine when they think of Helen Keller. Deafblindness exists along a spectrum.

In my case, I perceive light and changes in brightness. I can tell when something or someone passes by and blocks that light, although I cannot visually identify what it is. And hearing-wise, with properly fitted hearing aids, I can hold conversations, enjoy music, read through audio, and access much of the world around me. For many deafblind people, hearing is not merely a sense—it is companionship, orientation, information, and human connection.

That is why properly fitted hearing aids, accessible technology, and access to tools that allow us to communicate and function fully are not luxuries; they are fundamental to our independence and quality of life.

Because listening—even in a different way—is also a way of seeing the world.

Gera
Enviado desde mi iPhone 16e