Falling apart to halftime.

I want to preface this by saying that while I write, my cat thinks my arms and chest are a bed.

See?

Yesterday was my update with good ol' doc.  He kept me longer than five minutes this time, actually, I told him that sometimes it's not hard to hear at all but high pitched background noises really irritate my hearing aids, so I turn them down whenever something goes awry at work.

But I did tell him that sometimes my own voice sounds muffled.  The appointment before this, I told him the same thing and he said that it's usually caused by not having the hearing aid turned up all the way.  I wear them turned up all the way all the time.  It's usually just muffled in a public setting, when I'm talking to someone one on one or when I'm with the team without any background noise (i.e., meetings) it's not that difficult to pick up on my own voice.

So he turned the hearing aids up.  I like that now I can hear my own voice when I'm at work and not have to struggle to know if I'm loud enough.  The only downside is that I no longer have the option to block out most sounds, so if there's a really terrible alarm problem at work, I might have to pop my hearing aids out until it gets resolved.

Practice was interesting.

I'm sick already so I went in there shortness of breath (which didn't really bother me during practice that much) and bad knees.  On Monday a couple of the girls and I decided to go to the skate park to work on our minimum skills.  I haven't passed yet because I was injured the first round of testing back in December, so I had to wait on us to get adequate fresh meat on the team.  We finally did.  But I digress... We're all at the park working on our skills and talking about the assessment when we get this great recreational idea to hop on the bike trail with our skates because it's about as wide as one lane on the track, we could practice pack skating.  NOT a bad idea AT ALL, except it was dark and that path is barely lit up.  I fell.  A lot.  I tripped over rocks, and it wasn't the falling that hurt so much, but the aftermath.  I knew my knees have been screwed up for a while, but I didn't quite understand the extent until Tuesday, and again yesterday.

I had Cupcake feel my knees because I know she has issues with hers.  She looked shocked that mine were scraping and popping with every bend.  She had Hollywood feel them.  Then Jennifer.  Then Bruiser.  It was just a heartbreaking moment.  I mean, will I make my knees work for me before this assessment?  I feel like I have to.  I have never wanted anything this bad in my life.  To be out there with the rest of my teammates, not feeling like I'm letting them down by having to watch from the sidelines because I keep getting hurt due to my inexperience and failure to be as mobile as they are.  Derby becomes them.

Hollywood told Skeeter that I had a derby girl heart.  I think that's all she needed to say.  That's all anyone ever needs to say.

Oh, no, God...

There's nothing really that new on the hearing aid front.  It's still really difficult to hear people talking if there is any type of background noise happening.  Even on the phone!  It's frustrating because I thought that hearing aids were going to be a quick overnight fix to my, "Huh?" and "What?" 's on the phone, but I've been let down.  Pisses me off.

Today was practice and I got my ass kicked by the endurance drills.

Warm-Up Drill:

- Sprint from one end of the rink to the other, when you reach the end do a four-point (Superman) slide, get back up, sprint to the other end of rink, do the same thing.
- This went on for about 10 minutes I guess?

I had to modify after the first couple of falls.  I was really shaky getting up, and very slow, so Hollywood told me to just touch the walls on both ends after sprinting.  She believes that with a couple weeks of conditioning that my endurance will be up and that I'll be able to keep up with the rest of the skaters.

Jammer Hell Drill:

- Sprint for 2 minutes, roll it out for 30 seconds.
- I'm not sure how long this went on for.

The Angel and the Asshole Drill:

- The Angel puts on the Jammer panty.
- The Asshole puts on the Pivot panty.
- The Blockers move in pack formation.
- The Angel gets through the pack by communication, no illegal hits, nobody should hit her because she is the "angel".
- The Asshole gets through the pack by any means necessary.  Illegal moves are allowed and encouraged.
- I was both the Angel and the Asshole, and they were awesome!  I loved being the Asshole more though.  I skated the opposite direction on the track and fell in the middle of the pack, I skated behind the pack and dove into them.  I skated behind them and yanked Squishy back causing him and a couple other people to fall?

Eeyore Drill:

- We were split into 2 teams (red and blue).
- We were given a stuffed Eeyore toy that we had to pass amongst our teammates after 5 seconds. 
- If we were knocked down, or knocked out of bounds, the Eeyore toy was given to the opposite team.

Hit Somebody! Drill:

- While skating in a pack, Hollywood, Mr. Hollywood, and Sonic Wave called our names, and told us what to do (fall, throw a hit, and who to throw it to).

During the Eeyore Drill, a few girls tripped, and I took 3 skates (that's 12 wheels) to the back of my left ass cheek and thigh.  I am in SO much pain right now.  Plus I have to work tomorrow, which I am not happy about because it was unexpected.  I won't get another day off until Wednesday.  :(

My new body and paychecks better be worth this shit.

My body's broken, yours is bent.

I used to love driving and now I look at it like something of a chore.  I woke up this morning and drove an hour and a half to Wytheville so the doctor could look at me for 10 minutes and tell me that he couldn't do any adjustments to my hearing aid this early into me having it.

He said that any adjustments to make it normal wouldn't do any good because normal, to me, is being deaf.

So he said that they would see me back in "a week or two" to check and see if I'm adjusting to my environments.  They scheduled me for next week but I'm going to get that pushed back a week because I'll be goddamned if I'm going to drive down there next week just to sit down with him for ten minutes again before he tells me nothing at all and sends me all the way back home.  That's 3 hours I could have spent working so that I wouldn't have had to miss practice tonight.  Fuck that noise.

In other news... Jenna is getting married next weekend, a wedding in which I'm a bridesmaid... THE FIRST WEDDING THAT I AM A BRIDESMAID (in which the bride wasn't my mother).

In not-so-new-news, Joxer is awesome and I'm in love.

The missing

I don't really feel like myself today... I miss Morgantown.  Kara and Terry are the only ones left up there.  Rae is in Texas and everyone else is just... gone...

And then my other friends from here... Karen moved back to Maryland, Aleah lives in North Carolina.  The rest of my friends have families and it's so hard to coordinate our schedules.  I just want to let you all know that I miss you so much, and I'm lonely.

The microwave screws with my hearing aid, I'm guessing.  I was heating up lasagna and when the timer beeped my hearing aids got really quiet.  After the beeping stopped they got really loud again.

I had to stay home from practice yesterday per Hollywood's orders because my knee is seriously jacked up.  I don't even know what I did to it, so I'll probably get it looked at Wednesday or something.  I just know that I can't bend it outward (like you would if you were putting your shoes on) and that sucks really bad.  It also hurts to get in and out of bed and stand for long periods of time.  My knee won't lock into place and tries to give out on me.

I don't need this shit.  I cannot be injured through another minimum skills.  I have to be out on the track with my team.  I won't accept defeat.  Not this time.  So if missing a couple of on-skate practices means that I'll be ready by the time evaluation happens, so be it.

In other news...

Every me and every you

I think I pulled a muscle at the top of my thigh Wednesday at practice, but it hurt only that night and only today.  No in between.  Maybe it's the way I skate?  I have no idea.  So, practice...

Practice was great!  Hollywood Hiplash ran practice because Cupcake Cadaver (our captain) was in Charleston NSO-ing a Chemical Valley Roller Girls bout (along with a few other of our teammates).  I had texted Hollywood yesterday and asked if she could work with us on stuff that we would need to pass for minimum skills since myself, along with the freshmeat girls were going to be there today.  So she did. 

Everything was great, except we had to skate the opposite direction on the track.  If you've never had to do this, you really cannot even begin to comprehend how difficult it is to change EVERYTHING - your perception, your leg position, etc.  It strained the muscles in my left calf so bad that they kept cramping... So I guess I'll have to up my intake of bananas and orange juice.  Plus my back was not in the best shape today...

I'm not really sure what's going on.  I'm falling apart!  The top inside of my left thigh is hurting, my back is bad, and my coccyx started acting up again only AFTER I skate.  Fuck that noise.  I'm not trying to be hurt before another minimum skills.  I can't tell you all how much I DESIRE being out on that floor, bolting that inside line and knocking down any bitch that gets in my way.

Anyway, more about practice:

We did die drills.  She split us up into two groups, the first group rolled the die.  Whatever number the die landed on, they skated that many laps.  We waited in the middle and rolled our die.  My group rolled the number 4 EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.  It might have been fine had we been skating in the CORRECT direction on the track, but we weren't.  Opposite direction.

Then we did an obstacle course drill to help with the minimum skills.  Hollywood set up cones in a bunch, and we had to walk on our toe stops to get through them.  I would have done it, but nobody brought their wrench today and for some god awful reason, my toe stops are two different lengths.  After that we skated to one corner of the floor and there were cones lined up for us to weave in and out of.  After that we skated to the second straightaway and there was a broom handle for us to jump over.  And rounding up the obstacle course were cones diagonally placed to work on our laterals.  I can hop.  I just don't trust my skates to catch me (although I did hop a few times today and know that I can do it - so why can't I trust them?)

My laterals are fine.

If I pick up speed I'm good at weaving.

I don't know how this toe stop business is going to work out.  I'm top heavy because of my fat tummy so I'm like, "Oh jesus fuck I'm going to fall."

We moved on to a long drill and I forget what it's called.  But it's a series of skating combined with whistle blowing and you do what they tell you to do.  T-stops, tomahawk stops, plow stops, skating on one foot, scissors, sticky skate (basically weaving your legs opposite one another without picking the feet up), and hops, and then just skating in between (and/or sprinting).  First we did it going in the right direction and then we did it counter-clockwise (FML).  I fell, and I knew I had momentum behind me when I actually SLID across the floor.  I FELL SMALL THOUGH.  Curled in a ball, slid on my knees and got right back up like a weeble.

The only other drill we did was a pack drill.  We all lined up in 3s (2 people were in the back because of the odd number) and when the whistle would blow one person skated out of the front line to the back of the pack, and the pack would have to move up and fill the gap.  It was very useful considering we were really close and constantly moving IN the pack formation, which will really help us on the track.

I think I can get some speed behind me.  Tomorrow I'm going in just a little early and attempting the 25 in 5 just to see how many I can get.  It's harder than it sounds, but like I said... I honestly believe that I can get some speed behind me.  So I guess we'll see.

From the beginning

I've had a few requests from friends on Facebook to cover how I came to be deaf in the first place.  Here is that story.

When I was a freshman in high school I was walking down the stairs to go to health class when I heard a high pitched ringing in my left ear.  It was like one long, annoying beep and when it went away, I was completely deaf in that ear.  I freaked out and ran to the office.  They called the school nurse in.

Obviously above her level of expertise, all they could do was call my mom and tell her what had happened.  We went to my doctor who recommended me to an audiologist in Beckley.  She conducted a hearing test and found that my left ear hearing was significantly less than my right ear hearing, which was nearly perfect.

Since I was so young, my mom's insurance covered the hearing aid that they provided for me.  It fit in my ear pretty well, was flesh colored (not nearly as large as the ones I'm wearing now, but we'll get to that in a moment) and just had one button to make things quieter or louder.  It was advanced for technology in 2001, but not nearly as advanced as what is available today.

I loved that having my left ear hearing aid allowed me to hear.  But it squeaked a lot, ate up batteries, and made the skin around the hearing aid scab and bleed because of the rubbing.

So I stopped wearing it.

At the time, we didn't think that my hearing was going to get any worse.

I started worked at a car company in July 2010.  I was a phone operator for the entire dealership.  No call came through the dealership without coming through my office first.  The phones rang nonstop.  And they weren't pleasant ringers, either.  These were loud, annoying, nails-on-a-chalkboard ringers that are on the same level of annoying as the loud trucks that sound like a Yetti is taking a shit and REALLY trying.

Anyway so this car company... I mentioned in my last post that the ringers started annoying my ears (probably because they're annoying - AMIRITE?!)  I started getting this sound in my ears that sounds like you're in a car, on the interstate, with the windows down, and go through a tunnel.  You know the sound.  And if you don't, take a drive down to Bland, VA sometime.  It's loud.  And it hurts.  And you can't hear a damn thing.

Back to the doctor.  We switched doctors because we like to shake things up every once in a while (that's actually true, but the real reason we switched is because we just wanted a different opinion).

The Wytheville doctor mentioned Miener's disease.  Vertigo, that noise, and deafness were all symptoms of it.  But this doctor was just trying to focus on helping the vertigo... No bueno.

My mom is really search savvy and found a doctor in Roanoke.  The best of the best.  Mr. I-Specialize-In-Special-Cases-Because-I'm-Special.  He decides to actually DO something and treat me as I do have Miener's even though there's not really a way to confirm that I have it (nothing showed up on the one THOUSAND tests that they ran on me to find the damn thing).

His treatment helps, he put me on Valium to help combat the vertigo, which is fair... Any day that I don't puke because the room is spinning is a good day for me.  And even though it helps it doesn't make it go away entirely.

I met with the Department of Rehab Services and they tell me about everything that's available to me... Free internet, a talk-to-text landline phone, and finally, my hearing aids.  Double hearing aids chickachickayeahhhhh...

So ANOTHER audiologist who runs ANOTHER hearing test (it makes the grand total somewhere around 23168746516354 hearing tests, I think?) and comes to the conclusion that I have 10-18% in my left ear and 50-65% in my right ear.  Both fluctuate thanks to the Miener's.

The day I got the call to get fitted for my hearing aids was one of the greatest days ever.  I was working the morning shift at work and checked my messages when I went on break.  Super stoked.

Last Friday I got fitted for them.  I picked them up yesterday.  They are a pair of Phonak Cassia In the Ear hearing aids in flesh tone.

http://www.phonak.com/com/b2c/en/products/hearing_instruments/styles-10/ite.html

Anyway, that's my history.  Thanks for sticking through that.

It's pleasant to hear the birds sing

One of the benefits of just getting hearing aids is that all of the jobs that I was ineligible to fill before have suddenly became available to me.

For instance, I was an operator once, for a car company in southern WV.  Some of you already know this story, and know the hell I went through trying to keep the job when my hearing started deteriorating.  There's not a doubt in my mind that my hearing got worse listening to that damn phone ring every single minute, and getting no sympathy from my succubus coworkers and boss that refused to let me turn my ringer off even after I explained to them (and gave them a doctor's note explaining the problem) that the ringer was irritating my hearing (or lack thereof).

So not only can I hear the person on the other end of the line now, I can actually hold the phone a good six inches away from my ear and still hear them perfectly.

I decided to look up jobs that I wouldn't have been able to do two days ago.

They are:

POLICE TELECOMMUNICATOR (4 Positions)
Pay Grade: 7 (20,472 – 37,884)

Description: Receives, responds, transmits, answers, and/or verifies messages and/or inquiries received over communication equipment. Operates all applicable radio equipment/computer terminal/telephone equipment, dispatches/receives radio/computer data/telephone communications. Ability to type accurately at a rate of 25 w.p.m. Shift work required.

OFFICE ASSISTANT II 

Pay Grade: 5 (18,552 – 34,332)

Description:

Performs full- performance level work in multiple-step clerical tasks calling for interpretation and application of office procedures, rules and regulations.                   

These found options were then followed by a letter that I e-mailed to the Personnel department of the WV State Police:

Dear Sir or Madam:

After searching the West Virginia State Police website, it has come to my attention that I am qualified and interested to fill two of the positions listed, and would like to know more about the process I should follow to apply for these positions. They are as follows:

Office Assisstant II, Troop O, Criminal Records Section
Police Telecommunicator, Troop 6 (Beckley)

Thank you.

Stay tuned.

Wednesday's a killer

I got my hearing aids today.  At first I thought it was going to be awesome, but already I have some major issues that I need to work out with good ol' doc when I go back next week.

1.)  I need 3 different programs in my hearing aids already.

•  Work has a noisy ice machine, constant beeping, and noisy customers that want to chat.  So I need an adjustment to cancel out the background noise from the scanners and ice machine so I can focus on the customers.
•  At home my boyfriend plays his video games while I'm working online or reading.  Even though he has the game turned down very low, it sounds like I'm standing next to a jet engine.  I need an adjustment to cancel out the background noise from his game so I don't keep yelling at him to turn it down.
• In the car I listen to music while I drive but the wind is so loud against the windows if I have them rolled all the way up.  I need an adjustment to cancel out the background noise from a road trip.

... See a pattern here?

Everything is so loud and it's such a different environment for me.  It's frustrating to think that I'll have to wait an entire week for this to be fixed... I've waited over a year for these hearing aids so I could hear something, and while I'm so happy that I do have them, I'm impatient with the fact that now I have to wait another week to hear less (albeit, LOUD) things.

I don't believe there will be any trouble hearing my teammates.  We do a really great job of screaming out orders when need be.

Practice was great today.  I made it through everything, but I did notice that I need to incorporate some potassium into my new nutrition lifestyle because I kept getting the calf cramps that I used to get when I was a kid.  And they're happening in my stomach now, too, which is just a deal-breaker.  It's like, "Okay, body, I get it, you've had enough!" But I haven't.  I never feel fully satisfied from practice unless I leave feeling like I'm going to die.

So how's about my first post, eh?  Eh?  Anyone?  Ah, you've all been a good crowd...