Friends Romans CountryMen and Women
Folks
I have some news to report which is not good.
You will know that in 2002 I underwent cancer treatment. That all went well and the treatment has so far been a success! There are however side-effects to the treatment and the most obvious one to you is my deafness. It has been progressively getting worse.
On July 31 I woke to no hearing at all*! I had been taking steroids for nearly a week because of the chance they might stave off this situation but to no avail! I was able to see my EarDoc on Friday morning and he administered even more powerful steroids [there go my olympic aspirations!]
* I still have multi-channel tinnitus
So telephone conversation is impossible. I can SMS and use Skype/MSN/iChat [ask for my usernames via email] Speaking one-to-one is almost impossible. I can lip-read if you face me [funny how people don't] - to a degree. Paper notes required. Email me any time!! Work - it remains to be seen how that will work. I have done a couple of jobs without hearing and they worked OK but that depends on the patience of the customer. I hope my current clients are OK and will tell me if they aren't! I expect to work hard to keep them happy and chugging-along. But there will be instances when it won't work.
The future
Stay tuned - if there is no improvement I'll be investigating a cochlear implant with the EarDoc. It remains to be seen whether I'm suitable, how affordable it is, many aspects to consider. Not good. If there IS improvement, you'll notice, next time we meet.
Stay well JC
