What will Father Christmas bring this year?

Aw, we are entering the first week of xmas, a special time for my family and me. Not for religious reasons, but because for the last few years, xmas time for one reason or another has been a time of change.

Three years ago when my hearing was bad, but with a lot of effort on my part, I could still understand speech, I had been feeling low for quite a while and my husband gave me a book published by the Open University called Creative Writing and sat me down. ‘I know you feel a bit useless’ he said ‘but you have always been good at writing. Why don’t you do a course’.

I thought about this and together we looked at different opportunities on the Internet. But I wanted to get out of the house and meet people and decided to sign up with Lampeter University to do a degree. I studied full time for two years, gained friends, a lot of knowledge and a MA, before xmas last year where my hearing went from deaf to profoundly deaf.

It was snowing and I panicked, thinking something was wrong with the hearing aid. The Audiologist agreed to see me on xmas day, insisted it was O.K! I was delighted, but as he tested my hearing and provided me with a new aid I could see in his face that it was bad news, even before he switched it on.

I really felt sorry for him, when he told me there was no hearing aid that would be able to deal with my kind of hearing loss. This year I can’t wait to see what happens next!