What is That Sound?

I’ve had hearing-aids my entire life, but my first memory of wearing them was when I was around six or seven years old and I had gotten a new pair after not wearing them for a year or so. I remember the fear and anxiety on my quiet car ride to the Children’s Hospital downtown. I watched out the window as cars rolled by, and my stubby little fingers danced along the door, feeling the vibrations that equated to sound in my world. My parents conversed in the front seat, but at that point I was too short to read lips in the rearview mirror so their words sounded like pure gibberish. A simple 15-minute car ride felt like an eternity to me, and so I laid my head against the door, the vibrations of the highway lulling me to sleep like an unheard lullaby.

The feeling of the car rolling to a stop in the parking garage was enough of a change to wake me up, plunging me back into the anxiety surrounding the trip. My mom opened the door, exposing me to the cold wind blowing across my skin like unseen fingers and dancing across my eardrum unnoticed. She took my hand and walked me past the neon green plastic animals that seemed to tower over me on my way to the elevators. As we waited for the elevator to reach our floor, I felt the rumble of it rushing up through the parking garage and felt the ding of the elevator bell rattle around my skull as it came to a stop. My family and I walked on and continued to our destination, the audiologist’s office. 

I remember walking into the office and feeling seen. The exaggerated colors, textured toys, and captioned kiddy cartoons plunged me into a world of sensory experience designed to place my mind back in the real world. I kneeled on the floor and played with the wooden toy area found in every pediatric office. I felt my dad’s voice rumble through the floorboard as my parent’s checked me in, felt them walk up behind me and fall into the hard and abhorrently small plastic chairs behind me. I looked up as footsteps grew stronger in feeling from behind the office door, and stood up when I saw the audiologist mouth my name into the waiting room. 

I followed dutifully behind her into an office full of plastic ears and all kinds of strange equipment and took a seat on the floor. I ran my hands along the ground as the doctor discussed the agenda for today’s appointment, and rose to my feet when my mother tapped me on the shoulder. I knew the drill by this point and knew it was time for me to enter “The Box.” I followed my audiologist alone down the hall and entered another room. I was placed in a soundproof box of foam walls within the room that silenced not only sound, but any kind of vibration. My head felt as though it was in a vice due to the dramatic change in air pressure required to keep a room completely silent. The doctor handed me a remote with only one button for me to press when I could hear the beeping and then locked me into the box for the remainder of the test. I strained in the chair as I desperately tried to hear the beeping. The first few noises were easily heard, but the test is designed to get quieter and higher in pitch with each round. I felt like I was insane as I pressed the button because though I couldn’t hear the noise, I swore I felt the ghost of the noise rattling around the walls. Eventually, everything went silent again, and as I peered through the small window in the box I saw my audiologist staring back at me without moving, a clear sign that the test was still going but I was no longer passing. She looked down at her computer, made a few slight movements, and then got up to release me from my foam prison.

 I once again followed my doctor back to the original office and watched as she pulled up a stockpile of graphs on the computer that all had my name in bolded letters at the top. She explained that the cliff-like drop of the line represented at what point the pitch of a noise became too high for my underdeveloped eardrums to hear. She made her recommendations and with my parent’s approval, started the process of making me my hearing aids. She placed two pieces of sandpaper-like foam deep in each of my ear canals and mixed a concoction of white and blue pastes into a large syringe. She placed the syringe into my ear canal and squeezed the freezing cold mixture around the entirety of my inner and outer ear. She gave me the leftover solution and taught me how to make a bouncing ball with it as the solution was left to harden in my ears. When the solution had finally hardened in my ears, she pulled the molds out and placed them in a container to be mailed off while we discussed what colors I wanted in my hearing aids. I knew exactly what I wanted, and the decision was made that for the next five years of my life I would be wearing firetruck red hearing aids with sparkly blue glitter molds. I was ecstatic the whole ride home thinking of my latest accessory. Clearly not my best fashion choice

Roughly a month later I made the same trip past the neon green squirrel into my audiologist’s office. The day had finally come, my hearing aids had arrived. I practically skipped into the office and squealed in excitement when she pulled out the box containing my equipment. I bounced in my chair rapidly as she placed the hearing aids into my ears and explained to me all of the different buttons and what they did. Eventually, I settled down and got ready for the final act. My doctor leaned down and turned my hearing aids on for the first time. Instantaneously my world changed. I was in complete sensory overload as sounds I had previously only known as vibrations rushed through my ears like flooding water. I was shocked to learn that the walls seemed to constantly talk to me due to the plumbing and the rumble of the air conditioner.  I walked through the halls of the hospital on the way back to the car and was completely overwhelmed due to all the conversations going on around us. Snippets of conversations that previously were left unfilled suddenly jumped out at me. Words I thought I knew how to say suddenly changed pronunciation entirely. It wasn’t until I reached the car that I had a moment of peace again; or so I thought. The highway proved to be a nightmare when it came to the sound of all the cars rushing by.

As we arrived home and I stepped out of the car, I heard a cacophony of shrieks piercing through the morning air. I looked in every direction attempting to find the source of the noise. My mom took notice and asked me what was wrong, when I explained what was going on she burst out laughing at me. I stood there in utter confusion wondering what on earth was so funny?  She put herself back together again and explained to me that the sound I was so horrified of was simply the singing of the neighborhood birds.