Wednesday 28 October 2009

My body's not talking to me

OK, so I'm still not up to scratch on daily blogging.

It's annoying me. It's annoying me that it takes so long to get back to normal.

Everything is frustrating me today. I'm feeling tired and I have a headache. My jeans are tight because my stomach is swollen. I found myself worrying about whether the swelling would go down, or whether I'd end up with a pot belly, when before my flat stomach was one of the things I liked best about me.

And then I realised that i'm worrying more about my appearance than my health, which is worrying in itself.

The problem is, my health is not communicating with me, but my appearance is. I don't know how I'm healing inside. I don't know if my appendix-free bowel is happier that way, or if it's continuing the self harm that got it in this mess in the first place. I don't know, if beneath the swelling, everthing is knitting together as it should.

My appearance however, that's communicating. The bruises are now a tasteful mustard colour and my main scar is an angry red, with mottled skin either side. It looks mad... kinda like a scowl.

My belly button is a completely different shape, too - with a long slice down the middle - it looks like a soft toy with a cracked eye.

It doesn't normally bother me and I normally hate feeling sorry for myself. But today I was just thinking about when I would get back to being how I normally am. I have no idea when this will be. I mean, my head is telling me, this was just surgery, lots of people have this every day.

Shouldn't I be fine now? When should I be fine?

Even if I wasn't deaf, I don't think I'd hear the answer from my body right now. My appearance is sulking so it's no help either.

Guess I'll just have to sit tight a while longer, just until they all start talking to me again.

Friday 23 October 2009

A flat for Deafinitely Girly

Today is Thankful Friday and I’m thankful that I’m off one set of pills as it means I hopefully won’t be having any more crazy weird dreams. Last night I dreamt that Shakira Shakira was telling me all about the Christmas cake she was planning on making…

But really, what I am mostly thankful for today is that fact that I am now a flat owner!!!!!!!

*faints

During the last few months, while covering for my boss at work, writing for Superdrug, writing this blog and suffering from Appendix-gate, I also decided it would be a brilliant time to go flat hunting, as you do!

And do you know what? I found one – just the one, because after all one is enough.

It’s lovely, just right for me and I rather love it.

And today, I received a call to confirm that it’s mine!

*faints again

I can hardly believe it – somewhere to call my own, bake cupcakes, fill with my boot-sale retro furniture and throw fabulous dinner parties…

The last few months, I’ve been sitting on my hands to stop myself Googling sofas, paint swatches, Dualit toasters and carpets. I was afraid if I did and it didn’t happen, I’d be stuck with nothing but dreams. But today, I can officially hit Google!

Whoop!

What’s most exciting about getting my own place is that I can finally fit all the deaf fire alarm stuff as I know I am going to be there for a while.

It will mean that I will own even MORE vibrating things…

Which after all, is never a bad thing!

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Recovering from writer's block

Yesterday, five years ago, I began what was one of my longest spells of writer's block ever. For ages, it didn't even occur to me to write anymore. I simply didn't have anything in my head to put into words.

Yesterday, this year, I was the same. The pure writer's block had returned.

But lots has changed in those five years. And while, it might have taken me much longer to pick myself up and write again then, it was important to me that I wrote today.

However, being sick is not great for developing new material!

I wake up...

I doze...

I eat...

I watch crap on TV...

I sleep...

And then, I realise the whole day is gone, it's dark outside and one day more has passed and I feel a little better.

And this in turn kinda makes me feel better about what I sometimes feel is insanely lazy behaviour. It's as if not doing much now that will ultimately make me feel better in the long run. And, I think if I tried my usual pace of life, I'd give up after about 10 minutes.

Don't get me wrong, it is amazing to be at home, looked after, cared for, helped by The Rents, but being away from London has made me appreciate how it really is my home now. How it's the city, and my amazingly rich circle of friends, both there and elsewhere, as well as my family, that give me my daily material, that make me Deafinitely Girly...

without them, let's face it, I'd just be deaf...

and girly.

As the cards and flowers have arrived, the visitors who came when I was in hospital, the presents I was given - all so incredibly thoughtful, I began to feel, not cheesed off by the pain or the inconvenience of my predicament, but incredibly blessed by how 'appendix-gate' was making me stop and realise just how lucky I am.

So thanks guys...

I do intend to continue writing every day while I am here, on these ditzy drugs that seem to make my dreams so vivid I wake exhausted every morning. So please do check back.

Deafinitely Girly's here...

and hopefully soon, her usual calibre of writing will be, too.

Monday 19 October 2009

Living with Elton John

Today’s blog comes from my bed… the most comfortable place at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, my recovery is going well, but it’s slow.

One of the things that’s amazed me the most since I came home is how insanely blonde I am!

What did they do to me in there? Steal my brain cells?

*blush

This morning, I took a shower. I shampooed and conditioned my hair. Then I lathered up the shower gel and forgot I’d washed my hair, so promptly showergelled it!

Most weird behaviour.

And another thing, I cannot stop rambling. There’s now flow to my thoughts right now. I’m nervous to blog at the moment in case I write a big pile of rubbish and chase all my readers away.

*sniff

But the oddest thing… the dreams!!!!!!

They are so real!

Last night, I dreamt that Gym Buddy and I shared a flat together – on the top floor of the Tate Modern. It was red brick and had a long corridor down the middle with rooms off each side.

She had the one at the end, I had the one in the middle and our other flatmate, erm…

Elton John (!)

had the room next to mine.

It’s like I close my eyes and go into this totally real-feeling world, where Elton John is my housemate, I get lost on a way to a Christening in Leeds, and I’m shopping in River Island where boots cost £700 with my work colleagues.

But sleeping so much and having all these dreams is kind of a novelty. After all, as I have said before, I can always hear perfectly in my dreams. So that means, right now, I am hearing for more of the day than I am deaf. Perhaps if I meet Elton John in my dreams tonight I should ask him to sing me a little song…

Just to see if he sounds any different to when I am awake…

I’ll keep you posted.

Friday 16 October 2009

Hearing in hospital

OK, so I am back at The Rents recovering finally.

This blog post will be short I am afraid as I have the attention span of a goldfish with ADHD and keep dozing off. This morning I tried to watch TV and fell asleep. This afternoon, I have tried to watch TV, and fell asleep.

It’s weird being out of hospital. I miss the camaraderie of my ward ladies – we were all willing each other to get better so we could go home.

Now I’m home, I’ve had time to reflect on what actually went on in that hospital. I realized I spent most of my time telling people I was hard of hearing. They’d come into the ward, fiddle around with my drip and talk at the same time. I’d have no clue what was going on, so would have to explain I was hard of hearing. I counted about three shift rotations of nurses, so by the end of my stay they all knew thank goodness.

One of the best people was the lovely anesthetist who was there for my operation. He was on immediate glasses standby the moment I woke up. I only remember sketchy things, but I do remember him giving me my glasses so I could lipread again.

Reminiscing with one of the ladies on my ward yesterday, she explained how even though she was in pain the night of my operation, I had made her laugh when I was brought onto the ward. Apparently I kept saying, ‘I’m a horse, I’m a horse,’ and mumbling something about a gorgeous doctor. She said she was intrigued to meet the girl who thought she was a horse.

I don’t remember saying I was a horse… and have no idea why I thought this – but even thinking about it now makes me chuckle, which is actually not good for the stitches.

*OW

Thankfully I am not a horse, but I am tired.

More tomorrow…

Thursday 15 October 2009

Blogging from my hospital bed

OK, so blogging in the middle of the night after being woken up by a big man who changed my IV drip, and after not blogging for 2 whole days…

‘What’s going on DG,’ I hear you say.

Well, for the last few days I’ve not been having the most fun. After feeling a little ill at Niknak’s Hen party – bad tummy ache, and not the fault of the alcohol, and spending most of Monday saying ‘Ow, ow’ whenever I moved around, Miss K finally convinced me to see a doctor on Tuesday.

Who promptly send me to A&E at my local hospital, who promptly admitted me, and who less than promptly at 3am yesterday morning, after a 2-hour operation, whipped out my appendix.

So now, I am appendixless and feeling a little sore for it. I am also on a ward with a wailing woman who I can hear, a little old lady who I can’t, and a catering lady who, when for the 5 hours I was not nil by mouth yesterday read me the menu so incoherently, I just ordered the three things I heard, which turned out to be apple juice – I gave it to Ma, a tuna sandwich – I gave it to Pa, and strawberry jelly – I gave it to the Food Expert, who was visiting at the time.

You see, for the first time in my life, I am not actually hungry. Hell, I can barely sit up and, after discovering the gruesome details of the operation from my surgeon yesterday, I will be surprised if my intestine EVER speaks to me again.

Apparently, and I don’t know why I am surprised by this, my appendix was quite unlike anything the surgeon has ever seen. Apparently also, this is not a good thing, so it has been sent to pathology for pickling and I get the results this morning – hence the nil by mouth in case of further surgery…

*GULP

So, onto more positive things, well everyone here has been completely amazing with regards to my hearing. At every pre-op stage, I fought my case to have my glasses on and I managed to keep them right up to anesthesia, which was quite a feat believe me.

One of my anesthetists, a tall handsome man, sweet-talked me into taking them off before the countdown from 10 – I got to 8 – and then as soon as I woke up, even though I was OFF the planet, I remember him putting them on my face, so I could lipread the nurses saying, ‘No, you can’t have water!’ and see that what they were in fact giving me was water-soaked sponges on sticks – which in my zonked out state I thought was an ice-lolly and tried to eat!!!!

I’ve also had a lovely selection of visitors, including Miss K, Snowboarding Boy and Lovely Freelancer, who all brought my flowers and weren’t allowed to bring them in. Apparently, flowers aren’t allowed any more in hospitals.

*sniff

Snowboarding Boy also bought me Krispi Kremes, but even during the 5 hours of non-nil-by-mouth, I couldn’t face one, so I ended up feeding them to London Cousins 1 and 2 when London Aunt visited.

And that’s it really, it’s a waiting game as to whether I get to count down from 10 again today, and if I do, what the end result is. I’m keeping the fingers on my IV drip-free arm crossed that it’s all OK.

Please keep yours crossed, too.

Monday 12 October 2009

The Ghost of Oast

OK, it’s disgraceful, I know – a blog after 5.30pm. I meant to write one earlier, I really did – but I was busy at lunch, and I dozed off on the bus to work this morning.

But anyway, here I am blogging away!

I had the most amazing weekend – it got off to a fantastic start as I found out just before leaving work on Friday, that I won the entire Superdrug Summer Insider Competition, and so, after lying down on the floor of the office to recover from the news, I was bouncing around the office.

Winning this competition is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me. Not only do I get a weekend in Barcelona, I also get a year’s subscription to Marie Claire and some other stuff I am keeping quiet about until I know it’s really, really gonna happen.

Thank you to the ‘millions’ well double-figures amount of you who got in touch to congratulate me about it – I will be sure to update you when I know more about my prize.

Now onto the weekend – we went away for Niknak’s hen do to a place near Lewes. It was an old oast house and had round rooms and was very very erm… retro. I loved it naturally – but on waking up the next morning, lots of the girls started talking of the noises of the squirrels in the roof.

Luckily squirrels in the roof don’t bother me as I can’t hear them. But what did bother me was the ghost of Oast…

*tremble!

Oh OK, it wasn’t actually wasn’t that scary, but I AM convinced that the ghost did exist because I saw it with my eyes – a bit of me that actually does work… when I have my glasses on that is.

I saw it creeping up the stairs during karaoke – who could blame it – as Niknak was murdering an Alicia Key’s song – and it walked behind me three times during breakfast one morning. I wasn’t alone in seeing it either – The Writer also reported seeing the shadowy movement that made up the Oast Ghost, when all of us were present and quite unable to create the shadow.

When I was little, Pa told me that if I didn’t want to see a ghost I would have to tell myself I didn’t believe in them and therefore they wouldn’t reveal themselves to me. But recently, I’ve stopped not believing – perhaps because it makes October easier, perhaps because I am less afraid of where dead people go now.

And what do you know – I saw my first ghost.

No one section me now please! :-D

Friday 9 October 2009

I want a hearing trumpet

Today is Thankful Friday.

I am thankful because I have a fabulous hen do to look forward to – Niknak’s actually.

It’s been organised by The Writer with incredible precision. We even got an amazing handbook telling us what to bring and what would be happening when. It’s a complete surprise for Niknak however.

Anyway, today I have decided to have a Hearing Aid Day – I have these on average once a year. These days usually begin with me opening my dressing-table drawer to get something else out and spying my hearing aids lying there forlornly.

Then I get a surge of optimism that they might actually help me today – that something might have changed and they will give me back my hearing.

So they are on and erm…

Well, I now know that I am a very noisy typer and that the air conditioning sound like an aircraft taking off in my office. But in terms of speech discrimination? Not a sausage!

If anything it’s worse as there’s so much more background noise audible now.

I’ve tried the different settings but nothing is great – and I also can’t remember what the different settings were for, either.

But the conclusion I have drawn is that, right now, hearing aids just aren’t for me.

I’m not being negative about this either, I promise.

In the last four years, I have been amazingly lucky and got to try out no less than four different kinds of digital aids. My audiology clinic is amazing – they listen to me and even took me up to the kids’ clinic when I requested a word test, as this is the best way to find out whether a hearing aid gives me any more clarity of speech.

The ones I have now, Oticon Spirit threes, won by 3 word sounds over the Siemens ones. There wasn’t much in it – but I didn’t like the Siemens one as a design fault meant they didn’t sit that neatly behind my ears.

When I have my hearing aids tuned at the clinic, I always beg them to turn them down as much as possible, because recruitment means that what I can hear and what is painful is separated by very few decibels these days. The first time I walked out of the clinic with hearing aids, a police siren was so loud, I fell over.

This intensity of noise is exhausting. But the problem is, once I shut it out, it means there’s very little amplification anywhere else. Thus defeating the purpose of hearing aids.

If my aids were a hearing trumpet from the olden days, it would be a miniature, dolls house version.

While we’re on the subject of hearing trumpets though, I quite fancy one. Imagine that – you’re in a shop, it’s noisy and you can’t follow what the assistant is saying. Then, all of a sudden, you whip out your ear trumpet and ask them to repeat what they just said.

I love it!

I want one.

Then I’ll just need a handbag big enough to keep one in – oh wait…

…I already have plenty of them!

Thursday 8 October 2009

Food glorious food!

Today it is incredibly sunny!

This is not fair! Did the weatherman not know that yesterday was my day off, not today?

*Pah!

He let me struggle through torrential rainstorms, ruin my suede boots – my fault for wearing them really – and risk life and limb on the M4, and today, when I am at work, it’s sunny.

*Harumph

This post, as a result, will be short and sweet as I want to get out there and enjoy the sunshine during my lunch hour and also buy some lunch as I am starving.

Today, I am thinking mostly about food. I have been hungry since I woke up at 7am.

I made toast for breakfast, but London Cousins 1 and 2 came downstairs and were hungry too, so I gave it to them as they needed to go to school. I made more, but burnt it as I got distracted doing London Cousin 1’s hair – she’s going to school dressed as a Victorian school boy today don’t you know – so I had charcoal and butter for breakfast, which wasn’t very filling.

I then got to work and found two leftover birthday cakes on the counter, calling me to eat them. I have resisted so far as cake before 3pm just seems wrong, plumping instead for some tortilla chips, which turned out to be stale and had the texture of corrugated cardboard.

But when I’m hungry, I’ve got to eat – so I persevered.

I’ve always been like this about food. When I was 18 months old, Ma left me outside the butchers in my pram with the fruit and veg from the greengrocers in there, too. When she came out, there was a huge commotion as I was apparently sat there chomping my way through an entire cucumber. I was clearly hungry and couldn’t wait.

Another time, I went on a very exciting date to the cinema – it was a foreign movie so had subtitles, luckily. Anyway, when we came out, I was hungry, so hungry that I couldn’t actually make coherent conversation and almost passed out on the pavement. I should have just told the poor guy I need food urgently – but I was embarrassed for some bizarre reason. On our next date, he bought snacks, just in case it happened again!

Paul McKenna says you should listen to what your body says it wants to eat and give it that because otherwise what you do eat won’t satisfy you. Thinking about all this food has meant I now want to eat everything. Although I mainly just want chocolate raisins and marmite and salad cream on toast – don’t knock it before you’ve tried it, it’s yum!

I wonder where I can get that in central London… anyone know?

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Waiting for November

Today, I am not at work – I went to Wokingham and met Pa for lunch, which was erm… well Wokingham really!

It rained the whole way there and the whole way back and at one point I couldn’t actually see the car in front on the motorway there was so much spray everywhere.

It’s weird not being at work during the week – everything’s quieter, the TV’s full of people shouting at each other, DNA testing their kids to see who they belong to, and Kim and Aggie sorting out cess-pit houses.

This non-work day and bout of daytime TV has had me reminiscing about my student days when I used to live on diet Coke and chocolate raisins – the former is right beside me, the latter I am resisting in my current battle against my double-figure figure.

Sometimes I miss those days, where there was time to study, new things to learn, exciting projects to embark on and 50p pints down the union. But then I realised that I still have new things to learn, exciting projects to embark on – currently 150 sugar-paste roses for NikNak’s wedding cake – and erm… £5 pints in Soho – OK so inflation has stuffed up the beer drinking, but if I am battling my double-figure figure, I should really give the beer a miss, too.

I think it’s October that’s had me reminiscing mostly. It’s always a month of challenges, reflection and changes for me and this year’s is already proving to be just that – with some good, some bad, and some downright sad. October finishes with my birthday – I’m perpetually 21 don’t you know – and then it’ll be November.

Phew.

Bring it on…

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Right where I am...

This morning, while I was eating toast, drying my hair and getting ready for work, I put Neighbours on.

In this particular episode, the tweens were trying to decide what career they wanted to do, and all of them were stuck for the answer.

I struck me, how incredibly lucky I was to know exactly what I wanted to do for my career, from about the age of 5.

And then it struck me even more, how incredibly lucky I am to actually be doing it now.

However, to say that I was always set on this career path is actually not strictly true though. When I was 10 I defected and decided I wanted to be a ballet-shoe maker, when I was 12 I had a month of thinking stockbrokering might be fun, until I got 10% in a maths exam and realised me and numbers are only friends when it comes to working out discounts in handbag sales.

Then, I had a very short period where I considered going into musical theatre.

No one laugh please!

It transpired I could actually sing higher than I could hear, thanks to diaphragm control, but trying to lipread instructions while dancing and doing jazz hands was something of a disaster!

And so after all this appalling unfaithfulness, I came straight back to where I always wanted to be.

Right where I am...

And the view's not that bad!

Monday 5 October 2009

Afraid of hearing the answer

OK, so it’s Monday morning, it’s dark and cold outside and I am zooming back to London on a train for another week of work. The Rents live close enough to London that trains in the morning are usually rammed with commuters, and for this reason, I often pay a mere £8 more for a first class single ticket.

This morning I was early for my usual train and there on the platform was a Virgin train, which was running late – anyone surprised by this news? Anyway, it’s a fast and speedy, non-stopping train to London so I jumped on it immediately, made my way to first class, and WOW!

This first class is very different from the first class on the little commuter trains I normally get when I am home for the weekend. You get free stuff, and a massive seat, and there are individual lights on the table like in an American diner, and I am the only girl in here – it’s most surreal. Better still, there's free internet for Pinktop - whoop!

But what I am finding difficult is obtaining any other free stuff – you see the lovely people in here serving tea, coffee and breakfast are whispering. They tiptoe up and down the aisle saying things I cannot hear and as I have my nose in my laptop I keep missing them. So far, two trays of bacon rolls have breezed past, the two men in front of me not showing any interest, so I have no clue if you have to ask for one, put your hand up as though you are at school, if you need to order, or if I simply don’t look rich enough to be here as when I tried to make eye contact with one of the ladies, she ignored me.

I’m hungry!

I don’t think I can really get the sandwich bag out that I stuffed two pieces of bread in, before I left The Rents, and eat that either – people would definitely wonder what on earth I was doing in First Class then!

Oop, update, I am now sipping black coffee, because I lipread it as ‘Would you like a tea?’ – it’s strong and nice and in about 20 minutes I am going to get a caffeine high like no other…

*boing

It’s frustrating though, I need to work on my confidence in situations like this and be more proactive – I should be able to say to a lady walking past with bacon sandwiches, ‘Can I have one?’ and not be afraid of her saying, ‘No!’ because after all, ‘no’ is just a word, and as I am sat in this fancy carriage legitimately, it’s highly likely that she wouldn’t say ‘No!’

I’ve always been like this though, even before I went really deaf – I’ve always been timid about asking for things – and when I do, I normally end up apologizing for asking in a very British manner and then it gets cringesome and I wish I had never asked.

There’s also another situation where I am afraid to ask, and that is where I already know the answer. You see, I can read body language incredibly well, which is not always a good thing. I often never need to ask the question, ‘Are you mad at me,’ because it’s blatantly obvious to me that the person is very mad at me. But it goes deeper than that – it’s horrible when you know someone is feeling something but not telling you and you can’t ask them because you’re too afraid to hear the answer, so you just go on pretending you don’t know until they eventually pluck up the courage to tell you.

I hate that.

So, while I am here, in first class, I am going to make a pact with myself – to ask questions when I want to, to not be afraid of the answer and to live my life unapologetically – except where I really stuff up and an apology is the only answer.

I am not sorry for being deaf, for needing to ask more questions, or the apparent invasion of privacy my ability to read body language brings. I am not sorry for being me.

Now , where’s that bacon roll?

Friday 2 October 2009

Erm.. did I mention I was deaf

Gosh, post three of the day!

And what a day it is turning out to be.

Just as Pinkberry came back from the dead, an email came through from O2.

It said:

We have a dedicated department for BlackBerry faulty devices. Please contact them on 01233 652 014 or 0871 2003 198 and they will be happy to help.

Checking back, I most deafinitely told them I was deaf and couldn't make phone calls, no less than twice in my SOS email...

I'm just off to ask Lucy is she can read!

GAH!

STATUS UPDATE

PINKBERRY is fixed!!!!!!!

Chris emailed me to recommend popping a drop of nail polish remover onto the rollerball to break down the grease. In my blondeness, I misread his advice and covered the rollerball in oil...

*blush

But in all fairness, it worked!

Pinkberry lives to vibrate another day.

Deafinitely Girly can now officially have a Thankful Friday and you lot can get back to bothering ‘LUCY'

Spinvox clangers

Today is Thankful Friday – I am not thankful because O2 haven’t emailed me back yet.

I think this weekend I will use my back up plan, which is to go into an O2 shop and ask them to call O2 online for me. This has worked in the past – but it’s not really fair on the O2 shop peeps as it’s technically really not their problem that O2 online make it so difficult for deaf people to get in touch with them instantly.

Yesterday when I was searching the site to try and find out about who I could email, I stumbled across ‘ASK LUCY' in the Contact Us section. Lucy is a Sim-esque looking brunette who looks quizzically at you as you’re typing before responding in what can only be described as a useless manner! Although there’s something kinda funny about her.

So, yesterday I typed: ‘Do you have an email for deaf customers?’

She replied, oh actually who cares what she replied to that as it didn’t help anyway! I tried rephrasing it a million ways and eventually I got bored of the answers and typed – rather immaturely – ‘You are crap!’

To which she replied: ‘Im sorry you feel that way, I'm only trying to help!’

Then I wondered what else I could ask Lucy, completely forgetting about my broken Pinkberry for a second.

If you ask Lucy if she’s single, she replies: ‘I'm happily engaged and we live together in a flat in Wimbledon.’

If you ask her about her hair she says: ‘My hair is brown with a hint of red!’

When you ask her what she ate today she replies: ‘I love trying new foods but when I cook for myself I stick to salads and a bit of chocolate cake.’

It’s the most time-wasting thing I have ever come across!

I implore you to go and play with Lucy…

Anyway, one service that actually does help me as a deaf person is Spinvox – this converts voice mail to text messages and is normally utterly brilliant. However, last night I received this message from my Ma:

‘Hi DG, presume you’re probably out of your ass in there darling. Hope you’re having a lovely night!’

Erm…

Out of your ass?

In where!?!?!??!

It transpires that Ma in fact thought I was out with my Aunt…

Ass…

Aunt…

Well, I guess it’s a simple mistake for Spinvox to make and easily its funniest one yet.

Anyone else had any good Spinvox clangers?

Thursday 1 October 2009

Deaf and Pinkberryless

Deafinitely Girly has some sad, sad news…

Pinkberry is broken!

Last night I was tapping away and went to use the rollerball scroll and… it wouldn’t work! It goes up but not down – it goes right, but not left. I was gutted.

Without my Blackberry it feels as though someone has made off with my outside world. It’s most odd – and I know it may sound faintly ridiculous to any hearing peeps reading this, but I feel slightly isolated.

Important emails are no longer buzzing their way through, and I can’t have my normal good morning chat with Tigger on MSN either – he speaks so fast that I could never even attempt to chat to him on a telephone… so MSN is a great way for us to have a catch up.

At the moment I am using a Nokia, which is OK – but my emails are not free to receive, as I have a Blackberry package, so it’s costing me money if I want to check them…

*sniff

Next issue is how to get hold of O2 – several fabulously wonderful people have offered to call them for me, but because of the whole privacy thing, they don’t like speaking to anyone except the phone owner. So I dropped them an email and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that someone will be able to help… soon.

When things like this happen though, it makes me grateful that I am deaf now, not 20 years ago. It’s so amazing to have all these effortless means of communication at my fingertips, to be able to keep in touch with all my family and friends at the press of a button and surf the Internet for information when I am out and about rather than having to make phone calls…

I love it! And right now, I miss it.

I remember when I got my first mobile – in 1997, after my Mini broke down in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night and the only option I had was to flag a complete stranger down and ask him for help – I didn’t really understand the concept of texting.

I was more interested in actually having a mobile, than I was about what it actually did. Then one day, I texted my boyfriend at the time, just to see what happened, and he texted me back straight away. I was gobsmacked – I think I thought texts were a bit like letters and might take some time to actually arrive – I had no idea they were an instant form of communication.

But after that discovery, there was no stopping me – one month, I actually sent over 1000 text messages and almost passed out when the phone bill arrived, as it was in the days before ‘free’ things and they actually all cost 10p each.

*wheeze

Over the years, I’ve tried many different phones, some just because I liked the look of them, one because it was the cheapest I could find in Tesco on the day of my car crash, when my other one had been squashed by the force of the engine landing on the passenger seat, but I deafinitely loved my Pinkberry the most. It suited me – it did three things at the same time and didn’t crash, it coped with my speedy typing with the most amazing proficiency, and never EVER spellchecked Deafinitely.

Fingers crossed she’s fixable, and fingers crossed someone at O2 will read my email…

DeafGirly: How I feel about being deaf at work

It's been a whole year since I posted a blog on here. Life's been happening. And I guess I am no longer 'deaf in the city and ha...