Deaf Girly and the optician

This morning I had an opticians appointment to check my contact lenses.

Being a girl of very little hearing, I am always quite anxious about looking after my eyesight, particularly as I am already really shortsighted. Shortsighted to the point where if I didn’t have my contact lenses or glasses on, I would be unable to see anything beyond a few blurry shapes. 

So anyway, I’ve recently changed opticians and today was my first appointment at the new place. Once there, I explained I needed to lipread or have really clear hand gestures to show me where I needed to look. It’s amazing how similar ‘Look up, down, left, right, blink’ etc sound in a dark room even when I do have my contacts and hearing aids in – and the optician was great, waving his hand in each direction and speaking slowly and clearly. 

He then took out my contacts to do some eyeball-checking tests and started to talk, which of course didn’t work at all as I couldn’t even see where his head was anymore, let alone what his lips were saying. Cue much scrabbling around for my glasses.

Next, I went and did a nerve test. For this I had to wear a patch over one eye and watch a screen and click a button whenever a white dot appeared. I failed the test as the assistant doing it had forgotten that I needed my contact lenses in for this test to see and that I needed to be looking at him to hear. It was a total car crash – I was almost fast-tracked to a nerve specialist as the results basically said I was dead.

However, once we had established the test instructions and restored my vision, I realised it was basically a hearing test for my eyes and as I sat there clicking away at the now-visible white dot, it made me realise how amazing it is that I can be so horrifically shortsighted and have this made completely perfect with contact lenses or glasses.

Thinking back to my bleep tests at the audiology clinic, I know for a fact that a bleep test with my hearing aids in would not product a score of 100% or even close. 

Hearing aids don’t make everything perfect. They enhance and add another dimension to what I hear but they don’t give me the equivalent of 20/20 vision.

And that got me thinking about the day that perhaps hearing aids will do this. A day where I can put on my hearing aids and they give my ears what my glasses give my eyes. 

Wouldn’t that be amazing?

But in the meantime I remain incredibly happy that at least one of my senses can be restored to 100% and the other one? Well as I’ve said many times before, I’m more than fine with it for now.

Happy Monday peeps.

DG

xx