HollyAlonzo – Never Giving Up Hope

Now that my hearing is almost gone completely, I can not hear myself when I speak.

I think I am talking normal. In reality I am speaking as fast as my thoughts, and the mind works a lot faster than the voice does.

When I speak to anyone, if there is background noise, they constantly ask what I said. This is so very frustrating.

Since I can’t hear myself speaking anymore, I am always talking too soft or too loud. Usually it is too soft and people have to get very close to me to hear what I say.

I still have temporary facial paralysis, and numbness of the tongue. Both of these things make it more difficult for me to form the words clearly. I have to slow down and make an effort to say whatever I am saying clearly and loud enough. I don’t do this automatically. I’ll say something in a way that feels natural to me, and people ask me, “what?”

No one seems to care or wonder why the numbness on the right side of my face has spread to the right side of my tongue and I can’t really feel it at all when I eat or talk which makes it hard. Is it a nerve problem? I don’t know. None of my doctors think so because there is no tumor on that side, but yet they are not trying to find the cause.

With the ABI, I wonder if you can hear yourself speak. If so, is that the reason people I’ve talked to with it sounded so clear? It really bothers me that no one seems to be able to understand me if there is noise going on around us. It almost makes me not want to talk at all. But I have to for Isaiah’s sake. He needs to vocabulary. I do sign to him when I speak though, so he will learn both. Even if one day I can understand speech again, I want Isaiah to always sign so it comes natural to him and he’ll be able to help somebody in the future.