How your life changes in the first 24 hours of wearing your hearing aid

You wonder about how your life experience will be richer. You have expectations around those items on your prioritized list – hear the television, hear conversations better – and you know these will be met.
You take your first steps outside our front door with your new invisible hearing aid … and then it starts. You’ve always enjoyed the feeling of wind on your face, but this experience is different somehow. Then it dawns on you that the new sensation you have is … the sound of the wind.

You listen to the hissing wheels of a passing car; the reassuring sound of small birds chirping. You hear children laughing in the playground. An airplane passes overhead. You realize that if hearing is like touching from a distance, it feels like you just removed your winter gloves.

You climb the few steps to the door of your home and you can tell by the sound of your shoes on the cement that you have a small bit of grit that you should wipe off on the doormat before you enter.

Inside now, you look at yourself in the hallway mirror and you are happy to see only your face. This is what the world sees.

You sit down on the couch and listen to the sounds of your home. A quiet ceiling fan is turning overhead. The chain switch rattles slightly.

You pick up a magazine and flip through the pages. Each page has a smooth texture – and a sound. A smooth hissing when you pass your fingertips over a page. You run your fingertips over other surfaces and hear the different sounds made by a tabletop surface, the fabric on the couch. There is a different sound when you run your fingers over the small hairs on your arm.

It is difficult for words to explain the difference. There is a joy in hearing the delicate high-pitched sounds that have not been there for years; and the low-pitched sounds are so much warmer.

You close your eyes and you feel like taking a nap. You listen to the sound of yourself breathing. You can’t stop grinning. And you wonder how it was possible that you didn’t think you were missing anything before.