Am I getting old?

I've broken my promise to myself to blog everyday without missing. I thought I could keep up by pre-posting. But that was before I killed my laptop and the second one hubby gave me and now I'm at the mercy of my daughters to borrow theirs. They only trust me with the computer, not the cord and so the battery always runs out before I get to blog or visit other blogs usually. Today, I got the cord so I can be on a little longer, plus I'm on holiday from the day job so I have a bit more time than usual also. It's my day to blog at RomErotica so I did that first since the battery died out on me last night before I could get to it. I blogged about next Monday's release "Last Man On Earth" and in my post I mentioned how my editor suggested I take out a reference to Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy as she'd never heard of Bobby and barely had heard of David. My editor is only ten years younger than me, so that blew my mind. I mean Bobby and David were teen idol heart throbs! Every girl knew them. Am I that ancient? So in case other of my readers didn't know Bobby I found a picture of him on the Internet and posted it with my article. I stopped for a bit to read up on what Bobby's doing now and it turns out he's truly the nice man he always seemed to be. He's now a volunteer EMT and trains other EMTs. Something very weird popped out at me on Bobby's profile so I'm going to segue. His profile says he's German - like me. But then next to German Ancestry it says "Risk Factors: Deafness". When I clicked on "Deafness" it went to a long list of other famous people of German Ancestry that suffer from deafness. This is significant to me, because you'll know if you've followed my blog very long, that I'm of 100% German ancestry and I also suffer from profound hearing loss. This is the first time I've ever seen hearing loss and deafness linked to being German. Or am I reading this wrong and being of German Ancestry has no big connection to going deaf early? One of the people on the list says he's a South Korean. Maybe the biography page is set up funny. But I am going to google this now and if I find anything that connects this, I'll let you know. Okay, I think the page was just laid out wonky and I jumped to conclusions. But the biography page did have the two things lumped together. Anyway, I feel old that things that are still so clear, so uppermost in my mind, are nothing t0 other people that aren't little like my kids. At the day job, I'm one of the younger ones in my department. Most of the ladies are 15 and 20 years older than me. So I usually think of myself as being pretty modern. Oh well. No biggie. By the way, I'm the guest blogger at http://pbdiva.wordpress.com/ today so pop on by and visit for a spell. You'll also want to see what Amarinda Jones, Anika Hamilton, Anny Cook, Barbara Huffert, Brynn Paulin, Bronwyn Green, Dakota Rebel, Kelly Kirch, Molly Daniels, Sandra Cox, Regina Carlysle, and Cindy Spencer Pape are up to, so make sure to visit them also. :)

Baha

I'm having Baha dreams.

No, not the tropical vacation spot. And no, I don't mean not some obscure religion.

The Baha I'm speaking of is a surgically implantable system for treatment of hearing loss that works through direct bone conduction. Specifically, it stands for: bone anchored hearing aids.

Supposedly it works miracles for the hearing impaired like myself. When I was given an evaluation this morning, I fell in love with it. I'm a candidate. Woohoo!



Unfortunately, when my surgeon approached my insurance company three years ago, they denied the surgery and I couldn't afford to pay for it. Hopefully, United has moved out of the dark ages and will approve it now.

I lost my hearing when I was 21, thus I've been hard of hearing all my adult life.

I was in the Air Force and I worked in an extremely noisy shop with inadequate ear protection. To top it off, when I began to have excruciating pain, I was pregnant with my first child and the AF base hospital OB/GYN clinic didn't believe I was having a serious problem. They insisted that it's normal for expectant women to have earaches and headaches. Thus, they allowed the tumor to grow in my ear for many months. The day the OB clinic finally sent me to ENT, I overheard the doctor saying that "I'll stop her malingering once and for all. We're going to prove nothing's wrong." Instead, the ENT doctor found my tumor. I wish I could have seen the OB's face when she got the news. I never saw her again, however. That's how the Air Force medicine worked - I rarely saw the same doctor twice. After Luke was born, I had a radical left mastoidectomy (ear surgery). The pain went away, but so did much of the hearing. This morning, the audiologist said I have "severe to profound" hearing loss.

Unfortunately, no hearing aids have been able to help much. I wear an over-the-ear model on my left ear. See the diagram left. My aid is similar to the one pictured on the bottom middle. It helps a little. If someone stands next to my left ear and speaks, I can't understand them. However, it seems to help my overall hearing. I don't ask "what" as often and I don't have to turn the radio up as loud as when I'm not wearing it.

So wish me luck. I would love to be able to hear conversations without missing half of what is said, or misunderstanding so much.

This wasn't much of a Valentine's Day post. Of course, I was at a softball game all evening and haven't celebrated yet. Hubby and I plan to celebrate Saturday night. I hope you all had a very happy Valentine's Day!