Fear emerges from not hearing

By Nancy Black

The boom of thunder. The screech of warning sirens. The crashing of trees throughout the neighborhood. All of these were horrible aspects of the recent storms in our community. But the worst part for me? I didn’t hear any of it.

Some may remember an editorial a few years ago where I wrote about my newly discovered benign brain tumor, called an acoustic neuroma. It’s making me go deaf in my right ear. Therefore, if I happen to be sleeping on my left side/good ear, I can’t hear anything. 

It’s a lovely benefit for the days I’m not working and can sleep in without needing to set an alarm. But for every other day — especially during severe weather events — it really is becoming a troubling problem.

I woke up the morning after straight-line winds tore through much of the city to missed text messages from my neighbors, who were making sure my animals and I were alright. I went outside and saw my cul-de-sac covered in huge trees broken in half like pencils. One was covering an elderly neighbor’s driveway, blocking access to his front door and car. My neighbor who had been texting me crawled through the branches to check on him. As I watched her wind her way through broken branches toward his door, the terror of what had occurred shook me to my core. It reminded me of an old “Twilight Zone” episode where Burgess Meredith’s bifocaled character emerges from a big city’s public library only to find the world around him destroyed. His character was actually thrilled everyone else was dead so he could just read, read, read for the rest of his life. He was happy until he broke his eyeglasses! 

My first order of business now is to order an alarm device designed for the hearing impaired. After the biggest storm last week, I learned that, through my iPhone’s accessibility settings, I can make a strobe light go off if I get an alert. I thought, “Cool!,” and changed that setting in my phone to the strobe alert. What a joke. 

When an alert goes off, the phone flashes three times super-fast. The problem is, if the phone is resting on a surface glass-side up, you can’t see the flashing light emitting from the backside of the phone. And even if my phone is facing display-side down, the strobe event happens so fast that, unless I am looking directly at my phone, I don’t even notice the alert.

For a better solution, I’ve been looking at various kinds of alarms online and it’s fascinating. 

Alarms for the hearing impaired or totally deaf people range from tactile sensors users put under their pillows that vibrate when an alarm (personal or emergency alert related) is triggered. Others have full blown strobe lights that start flashing to use visual cues that an alarm is going off. I may get both. And soon. This is Texas. Who knows what Mother Nature has in store for us next.