Five-Star Disability

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Hey folks, when I started to this blog, I wanted to detail the five parts of CAPOS. For some weird reason, I never got to the S part, the deafness part. Sure I talked about being Deaf, sign language and all that comes with it; but never explored my form of this hearing loss.

So, without further ado… Sensorineural hearing loss.

Oh wow! I just discovered that Sensorineural hearing loss has an accepted medical abbreviation! No more spelling that 13 letter word, and trying to remember the correct spelling! I can just use SNHL and it will be clearly understood… by those who are registered audiologists. The rest of the population may politely say: “What? SNHL? You mean Saturday Night Hockey Live?”… Hardee har har!

In all seriousness of this topic; SNHL refers to damage to the auditory nerve or the inner ear structures, the cochlear. Thereby the person becomes hard of hearing.

More specifically; sound vibrations: a person talking, a baby crying, a siren, an AC/DC concert, your spouse telling you to get Milk, are “heard,” but the neural impulses are not encoded in the right way due to this damage, and obviously they are misunderstood in the brain.

Sensorineural Hearing Loss is irreversible, and incurable, and in my case progressive. When I was in grade three, I had a pair of hearing aids, I didn’t like them. I took them out and hid them at school. I could still hear and communicate good, I just made some blunders, misheard some instructions. In high school, I lost more hearing and needed more one-to-one support. In college and university, my hearing had become severe, and I needed to use ASL interpreters. Now, my hearing is very bad; my right ear can hear the buzz of a shaver, but not the voice of my wife. My left ear is deaf to the world!

A word of caveat, all the articles I have read online about SNHL, the general remedies include either hearing aids or cochlear implants. There is no mention, that I can find, of using Sign Language to overcome this hearing loss.

Maybe because ASL cannot “fix” the hearing loss, it doesn’t matter what how a person becomes hard of hearing or deaf, sign language is not the cure; said the medical profession! This is a form of audism, which is discrimination towards those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

I want to be clear; American Sign Language is just as viable and attainable as hearing aids, it is also easily more easier to learn than the invasive surgery that is Cochlear Implants. ASL is an option damnit!

I learned ASL when I was 18, and use it every day since. I understood, then, that my hearing would become progressively worse. And I could not lipread, so, the only option available was ASL.

To emphasis this point: I will compare my time in high school, when I did not have ASL, to now, where I use it daily:

• In high school I had zero friends of my own age.
• Now, I have friends, mostly DeafBlind or Deaf.
• In high school, my birthdays were usually family and family friends.
• Now, my friends come to my party, at least I’d like that to happen! (Damn you coronavirus!)
• In high school, I was often struggling with courses, subjects.
• Now, I can learn and appreciate something easily, true, repetition is best.
• In high school, I was not considered a good public speaker.
• Now, I have been “speaker” at many international conferences, I have been on many committees, organizations and boards as a DeafBlind representative.

So you can see that, while SNHL is incurable, there is life. It is not the end of the road!

However, this is the end of this blog! And it is the end of my compilation of the five parts of the CAPOS syndrome. But before I go, I want to draw your attention to one thing that may or may not have made a connection.

In Optic atrophy, the issue is nerve damage, and in Sensorineural hearing loss, there is, again, nerve damage. So, it goes beyond saying; I have a lot of nerve… damage!

Thank you for reading, liking, donating and talking about CAPOS!

I now return you to your normal boardcasts! Monday I’ll be doing some fun articles