There’s so many things about a brain injury which are difficult to deal with, but probably the most fundamental is accepting that you can’t do things as easily as you did before. We often can’t even recognise what we’re struggling with to begin with until we look back at an event with hindsight.  I’ve mentioned before in Lack of insight when brain injury strikes how this can affect me in strange ways, and quite frankly, can leave me feeling a little ashamed at my abnormal behaviour. Maybe that’s why I sometimes find it hard to accept that I need help with certain things because it means I have to acknowledge my problems.

Accepting support is so much harder than it sounds.

Actually I thought I’d become much better at accepting help, and I guess I had, but there was one more thing that required me to swallow my ego to deal with. Even as I sit here now, writing this post, I don’t feel comfortable opening up about what I’m about to admit. Not because it’s anything to be ashamed of, but because I have to own up to my disability which I find distressing. Previously in Tinnitus, the loathsome bells of brain injury I’ve told you about some of my hearing problems. Now the eagle-eyed amongst you with have spotted that I wrote that article almost 5 years ago. (Oh my, have I really been prattling on about brain injury for that long? Thank you for continuing to put up with me all this time.) Even though I have been living been this issue for a long time now, I have only just put serious effort into accessing a long term solution. Why? Because I knew I had some hearing loss and I was frightened that I might be told hearing aids would be the only answer. I didn’t want to have to face that because I didn’t want the world to see them and know I have a disability. The irony of that when I’m have complained about living with an invisible disability for so long isn’t lost on me.

I had been mishearing what people were saying and constantly feeling like I needed to either turn the TV up or have subtitles on to make sure I followed the dialogue properly. So finally I had an appointment with a private audiologist who confirmed my fears. I have moderate hearing loss which will be at least contributing, if not the primary cause of my Tinnitus. I have no doubt that my brain injury has exacerbated this and left me in this position. Although the news did not surprise me, I was deflated when he told me I should have double hearing aids. My left is worse (as is my leg, arm and well, everything following my brain injury) but I still warranted assistance for both ears.

I’d been trying to avoid having a device to support my hearing because I didn’t want people to SEE me as a disabled person. 

As I’m in my late 30’s it’s not considered usual to have this level of hearing loss. The hearing aids the NHS hand out to patients here in the UK are large and very noticeable. My fear was that they would be uncomfortable and that people would see a “deaf woman” rather than me. That’s why I chose the private route. I know that this isn’t an option that many can consider, but honestly I would have just continued to tell myself that I could deal with it and try to ignore the problem. Fortunately, at a price, they were able to offer me hearing aids which are small and unless you look very hard you would never know were there. I don’t know why, but it still makes me feel less of a person which is stupid because I hold no judgement of the deaf community at all, so why am I any different? I guess the ego has a habit of holding ourselves to a different standard to that of which we have for others. Rationally, I realise that how well a person can hear holds on bearing on everything else about who that person is, thus it’s irrelevant to everyone else. But my ego and I need to get comfortable with our new reality. It’s been less than 2 months since I started using the hearing aids, and I’m slowly getting there. I haven’t told all my friends about them yet, for some crazy reason writing it here first feels like the step I need to do. Once I’ve put it out there to the world I don’t have to talk about it anymore. Either people will read it so everyone has the opportunity to learn about it at the same time, or they’ll notice them and bring it up. This way I don’t have to keep talking about it. That’s something about me that I have some to recognise, it takes me a lot of time to get to the point where I feel able to have open conversations about things which I’m feeling awkward about. Like when my car accident and subsequent brain injury happened: it was many many months before I told people what had happened and what I was going through.