The Talk after the Talk

She had faded red curly hair and a sweetly joyful smile. I’d never met her before.

She came up to me after I’d given a very brief talk about my experience with agism which turned out to be a tale about how the combination of aging and severe hearing loss had put me into an ever-narrowing tunnel of isolation and depression and how I was rescued from the depths by a cochlear implant ten years ago.

“I’m getting a cochlear implant,” she said. I told her that was wonderful news, and we immediately began to hold hands. She told me the story of her hearing loss, a sudden, overnight loss that was total and absolute. She walked me through all the steps of discovery, how she thought the phone had gone dead but worked okay with her other ear, and how she’d come to the decision to have the implant done. She asked me my name. I told her.

It turned out that we see the same audiologist at the medical school clinic that specializes in cochlear implants. She talked about the next steps in her process, this appointment and that. She asked me questions about adjusting to an implant, about voices seeming tinny at first, and I reassured her that time cures the tinniness. Voices only sound like Donald Duck’s for a short while. She asked me my name. I told her.

“I also have Alzheimer’s. That makes things a little more complicated.” She said this as if she was mentioning a bum knee or diabetes. Then we talked about the research that says hearing loss accelerates the progression of Alzheimer’s. I told her that the cochlear implant would slow that down – the more she could hear, the more she could engage and participate. It was a great move. She asked me my name. I told her.

“Did I already ask you your name?” she asked.

“I don’t remember,” I said, giving her my card. She studied it and put it in her pocket. Then we hugged goodbye as if we were old friends who had run into each other at the bus stop.