elizabeth_oswald

Can you hear me now?

Added 2023-10-17 17:18:39 +0000 UTC

Alas, I cannot. I feel like I've been giving you a lot of excuses lately, but about a week ago, I experienced something called Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss. It's only in one ear, thank goodness, but I am now completely deaf on my left side. I've been running around trying to get a diagnosis and treatment, and finally got in to see an ENT yesterday.

The good news is, I can now speak to the experience of being deaf with much more authenticity, and you can bet I'll have a character in a future novel that takes advantage of that fact.

The bad news is, because my loss is profound, I only have a 1/3 chance of complete recovery (thanks to the steroids I started today), 1/3 of 'some' recovery (and that's, y'know, the entire audible spectrum), and 1/3 remaining deaf for the rest of my life.

All of which has been very stressful, distracting, and, frankly, frightening. Now that I have a diagnosis, and the only treatment that's known to even help, we leave the rest up to whatever forces of the universe govern such things. In six weeks the best chance of recovery will have passed, so fingers crossed that things are all good by November 12th.

Again, I'm very sorry for not being able to keep up with the schedule you (and I) expect!