encompass worlds

So this requires a certain level of backstory...

All my life, I've missed and misheard words that people said, I've relied on trying to lipread and trying to guess what people were telling me, I've gone totally silent in group conversations because I can't keep up, I've been afraid of phone calls because I can't hear what people are saying clearly, I've struggled to parse words, and been embarrassed to ask people to repeat themselves for the third time, I've tried and tried to find out what was wrong with me and got very little in the way of answers.

And then there was the tinnitus, which has been driving me to the edge of rationality for the last several years. Imagine hearing a high-pitched noise once in real life, and then hearing it for hours and hours after that in your own head. Imagine a constant low hiss in your ears, or crackles and pops intermittently, or sometimes, a sort of splitting noise in your head, so loud it can wake you up, but it's entirely in your head.

I cried in an audiologist's office once, about ten years ago, when he told me my hearing was 'normal' if on the lower end of things, and there was nothing he could do for me. I've been so desperate all these years to try and get something that helped. And then about six weeks ago I got a call almost entirely out of the blue from the Audiology Department of my local NHS region, telling me they would like me to come in, take another hearing test, and be fitted for a hearing aid. (This was apparently the result of an appointment I had about 18 months ago, where an audiologist, for the first time ever, took me seriously.)

That appointment was yesterday. I now have a tiny little hearing aid on my right ear. It's practically invisible.

And I can hear. I can hear every word in a sentence! I don't have to guess at half of them! I can hear people speaking in another room! I can hear cars passing on the street outside, I can hear the low hum of the cooler at the other end of the room, I can hear the little noises my cat makes as she sits on the back of my chair.

I very nearly cried in an audiologist's office again yesterday, but this time from joy. What a difference, instantly apparent, unbelievably wonderful. It feels like my brain has so much less work to do. I'm learning how to relax during conversations rather than be always tense and focused. And almost the best part, this hearing aid is helping to fix my tinnitus (at least in the right ear). It'll take a while to settle in so that I get fully used to it, but it's already making a huge difference.

I live near the train station for my small Fife town, so when I look out my landing window of a morning I'm used to seeing cars parked in every available bit of space that isn't residents' parking. About two weeks ago, I started noticing that the number of cars was decreasing and decreasing, and now the only car I can see from my landing window is one that has clearly been abandoned, as it's been there for over a week.

Despite our best efforts, we had to go out three times last week -- all of them to the hospital for my mother-in-law's appointments, though we used the fact that we were out to do other things as well. Now that government guidance for shielding extremely vulnerable people has come into effect, she is terrified of leaving the house even for the necessary medical things she has to do. She has to have her blood checked every week, which means she has to go to the local doctors' office, which she fears might be a prime place to pick the virus up. We walk around with sanitary gel and handwipes constantly to hand, and I've perfected opening doors with my elbow and calling lifts with my knuckles, when we have to go to hospital.

All the hand washing is drying our hands out. Our most valued household substances seem to be hand cream, soap, sanitising gel, and cleaning wipes.

Financially, it'll be a struggle too. We were already barely barely coping, and now my husband's salary is going to be cut if he stays in work, and could reduce even more if he's furloughed. We will need every mortgage and loan repayment holiday that we can get, and those kinds of holidays will be the only ones we get this year.

We seem to be more or less okay for food and household stuff. We didn't panic buy, but had slowly been building up our reserves for the last year or so anyway, so that is standing us in good stead now. I also had a little foresight and managed to book weekly delivery slots until April right before there was a huge rush on them. One thing we did stock up on in slightly ridiculous amounts was cat food, because we humans can eat different things if we need to but the cats need the food they will eat.

Our last trip out included a stop at a local garden centre, where we picked up some flowers for our balcony, some seed potatoes because I've always wanted to grow potatoes, and a bunch of other seeds for random experimentation. I think even the strictest shielding encourages being outside in the sunshine a bit, even if on your own doorstep, and our balcony should be safe enough for my mother-in-law to potter about a bit and watch things grow.

In a lot of ways, we were already pretty socially isolated, so this is just a more extreme version of normal life. As the weather gets nicer, it's going to be harder and harder not to be out in it, though.

I'd love to distract myself with fandom but I'm just not feeling it at the moment. Maybe my creativity will come back once things have settled into a bit more of a routine under quarantine and maybe not. Right now I'm just kind of wishing I could go to sleep for three months (or however long) and wake up when it's over.