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My hearing aids are very important to me – especially in my work - and I am at the stage where I can hardly operate without them. I am not sure whether I have just got used to having them or whether it's just from habit! It's wonderful to know that that I can hear what's happening around me and not to be so cut off from everything.
Even though it is now winter, I still occasionally have problems to get my ears dry, as they tend to sweat. I have to take out the hearing aids every now and then. I am also very careful not to get an infection in my ears, because it really puts me at a disadvantage.
My speech is improving, according to all my friends and family. I am trying much harder to communicate with my hearing clients and I enjoy talking to them. I am also busy with a course to give me more self-confidence and to use my potential to the fullest.
It is wonderful to be able to hear and to be aware of the fact that I have just as much as a right to be here as anyone else. Even though I have always known it, it's difficult to know that on an ongoing basis. It is difficult when you are disabled in some way not to take some people's insensitive reactions personally. And one day you realise that it has affected your self-confidence.
But I really feel that I have made great strides in the past year with speech therapy, with becoming accustomed to the hearing world and to entering the working world. In this, my last column for a while, I would like to thank all of you for supporting me, and I would also like to thank Widex, without whom none of this would have been possible.
