The Beginning of My Dance?

Hello! Welcome to my Blog. My name is Laurie and I have had a severe hearing loss all of my life. I will celebrate my 48th birthday tomorrow (on April Fool's Day!), am married to my wonderful husband, Steve, and have four awesome children, Jason (24), Chris (21), Brad (19), and Marissa (16). I have a 95% hearing loss in both ears and wear the most powerful hearing aids that I can possibly get. Lately, I have been struggling with not being able to hear the sounds that I want to hear, especially in church and with music. My hearing aid specialist (and dear friend) recently suggested that I should look into getting a cochlear implant. I had thought about it before but was under the understanding that there was a chance that I could lose what little hearing I had left. I wanted to wait until I had nothing left (I also didn't like the idea of a long cord running to a box because I grew up wearing a body aid and don't want to go through that again). But, John says that there is a better success rate if it is done BEFORE all hearing is lost. . .so, he introduced me to Susan U., who recently had a CI done two months ago. I am excited and encouraged by her story and will make an appointment with a doctor in Knoxville first thing tomorrow morning to be evaluated! (John has already faxed my file to him!) :) I have always been a part of the hearing community and never learned to sign (but I read lips) and can only count on one hand the number of deaf people that I know personally. I tried to tell my coworkers today that I needed to talk to another hearing impaired person because only they would understand my questions, concerns, and the silent world.

Susan shared a little bit with me about her journey, showed me her implant and gave me some wonderful websites and information. I have so much to do! But I did read her story on Blog and decided to create my own. So, here it is! The Beginning of my Dance with Sound. . .