Deaf Awareness Month: How I Became Deaf

 

September is Deaf Awareness Month. As someone who has been deaf for 35 years, this month is a very important month to me. It definitely has a special place in my heart. When I wrote articles for the Deaf/HOH community for SIGNews, I felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction knowing that I was contributing something positive to the Deaf/HOH community. I continue to do this in my writing, as well as efforts to advocate for members of the Deaf/HOH community.

 

Another way to positively contribute to the Deaf/HOH community is to write about misconceptions circulating among the hearing world about people who are deaf. However, before I get started writing about them, I feel I must first share my experience of becoming deaf.

 

Interestingly, my personal experience of losing my hearing ties into one the many misconceptions out there about people who are deaf.

 

These misconceptions are that:

 

“Someone who is deaf was probably born deaf”

 

And that

 

“Deafness is genetic.”

 

Both of these statements about the Deaf/HOH are NOT true for everyone who is deaf.

 

I am proof of this. I was not born deaf and my deafness is not a result of a genetic deficiency or mutation.

 

Actually, I became deaf as a result of an illness – specifically, spinal meningitis. (Many people may recognize that term as just “meningitis.” However, there are different types of meningitis, and the one I came down with was the spinal variation.)

 

I was 13 years old and out trick-or-treating with members of my family on Halloween night. One of the people who answered the door to our knocks was someone who admitted he was feeling sick.

 

And I happened to be standing right in front of him as he breathed on me!

 

The next day, my sister and I were playing at my older sister’s apartment when I started to feel a stiffness in my neck. I soon experienced body aches, chills, and came down with a fever. To this day, I still remember hearing my sister talking on the phone in the other room and saying, “Mom, Dawn’s sick.”

 

Little did I know that it wouldn’t be long before I never heard her voice again.

 

My condition worsened. Because my family was struggling financially and we didn’t have insurance, my parents delayed taking me to the Emergency Room. It was only when I had so much trouble standing up one day that I fell down and hit my head on the wall that my parents decided it was time to take me to the hospital.

 

At the hospital, the nurses had to hold me down while a spinal tap was administered. (That was 15 shots in my spine. VERY painful!) It was sometime after that when my parents were informed that I had contracted spinal meningitis.

 

And the doctor told my parents if they had waited any longer to seek medical care for my condition, I would not have survived. (It was much later AFTER this that they learned the person who reported feeling sick on Halloween night had meningitis. He did not survive it.)

 

Losing my hearing was a bizarre experience. It did not happen right away. My hearing came and went. I remember calling for help because I couldn’t get out of the bathtub and I only caught snippets of my voice. I thought maybe I wasn’t shouting loud enough. (But they had DEFINITELY heard me. I didn’t realize that this was only the start of my hearing being affected by my illness.)

 

Eventually, there was no sound at all. I became completely deaf while I was in the hospital. I remember feeling confused and afraid because I couldn't hear anything. I didn't understand why. The doctor explained to me that I was deaf now and that my deafness was a result of the meningitis.

 

Well, I lost my hearing, but I survived being ill with meningitis! To this day, I am extremely grateful that at least I was still alive!

 

It was Thanksgiving when I came home from the hospital. It was my first silent Thanksgiving. I remember that I was extremely depressed about losing my hearing. That depression lasted for a very long time.

 

These days, however, I am no longer battling long-term depression about being deaf. Becoming deaf has actually made me stronger. It has opened up a whole other world to me (the Deaf world and the Deaf/HOH community) and it has helped me to find ways to still be able to do things DESPITE being deaf.

 

I am proud to be a part of the Deaf/HOH community. Even though I am not as widely accepted, welcomed or recognized by other Deaf agencies or members of the Deaf/HOH community, or even the reading public or the world at large, I am proud to have a place as one of the Deaf.

 

Becoming deaf has also taught me a lot about just what members of the Deaf community endure in the hearing world and it has introduced me to new ways of seeing my community and the world around me.

 

I am currently writing my memoir and it is about my experiences not only being a burn survivor but as a deaf person as well.