Hello Kossaks.
This is my first blog post here at the DK. I have few delusions that many or any will actually read this but I needed to tell this story. I do hope to add to the political conversation but I thought I'd start by telling my story a bit as it is a direct story of the good government can do in people's lives. I'm gonna have to back track a bit so please bear with the length.
I've worked all my life from age 16 in restaurants minus the few 3-6 month layoffs in between jobs I have done every working position you can think of. Including management and even owned my own place very briefly - quick how do you make a million dollars in the restaurant industry? Start with five million, you'll get there. Not that I ever had that kind of working capital and the failure of that business was as much my fault as anyone's, but that's not what this post is about.
Back in 1990 I lost the hearing in my left ear. After some medical treatment and with bills piling up I gave up. I had insurance but the deductibles were sucking up all my free cash and eating into savings and credit. So, since my right ear was still normal I simply resigned myself to the fact I'd be one-eared for the rest of my life. Then in 1996 the right ear crashed. After a brief time with only one hearing aid, it was suggested I get the second one for the left ear also. Though comprehension was horrible in that ear from years of lack of use.
Life carried on and being now fully hard of hearing with major communication issues I was forced to abandon my restaurant work. At the time I was working as a fine dining bartender and wanted to make it my career. I changed jobs to delivery driver for another restaurant the company owned and decided to finish my college degree. It had been in restaurant management but I was able to roll over enough credits to get 1.5 years of courses comped off my tab and changed majors to Information and Decision Sciences - MS Office mainly with an emphasis on database programming. I received a grant the first semester but when my father died and left me some savings that was revoked. Still I took the loans and when I graduated in December 2000 I was only $25,000 in debt.
After 3 months I found work with a consulting company in March 2001. The career change did not work out for me and 6 months later, when the towers fell, I quit figuring life was now too unpredictable for me to continue working 75 hours a week doing something I hated that much. I went back to delivering and did that for another year but then the company outsourced the delivery department to save on benefits and I took the unemployment.
Another year goes by I'm eating through savings and doing nothing and my mother offers me a place to stay in NC. So, I moved back in with Mom and her partner. Mom had retired there from Chicago and was struggling with Parkinson's. This is when I opened the restaurant - a Chicago Style Pizzeria in New Bern, NC. As previously mentioned the place didn't make it. After tax deductions and selling most of the investors got back about 50%. However the time running my own restaurant led me to land a management job with a major restaurant chain in Jacksonville, NC - home of Camp LeJeune and 45000 US Marines.
That job lasted 2 years. But, in March 2007 the hearing in my right ear started to crash at the same time my Mom's Parkinson's took a major turn for the worse and my boss turned into a raving asshole after we lost a bunch of kitchen labor in one week. I didn't realize my hearing was going. I thought I was having problems with sinus congestion and was pounding decongestants. I got fired in May 2007. Obviously my hearing wasn't the only thing crashing at that time. The economy took a nosedive too.
I took the summer to figure out what I wanted to do. As I came to the realization my right ear was now deaf and thus my communication skills were almost nothing in any kind of noisy environment decided I couldn't do restaurant work anymore. I went to visit Gallaudet University in Washington DC - a college for the deaf and hard of hearing but it was too expensive. I continued to look for work and took some continuing education classes at the local community college in computer repair hoping my hearing loss wouldn't be such an issue in that field. I got certified in repairs/Windows OS platforms and networks, but had no experience and no one would hire me.
Over the next 2.5 years I went through all 99 weeks of unemployment. In January 2010 my Mom passed away and with nothing left to tie me to North Carolina anymore I accepted a room with my Sister in San Jose. I arrived in April 2010 literally filing my final week of unemployment benefits while driving from NC to CA.
My life started to change immediately. Being back in a big city I was able to start to explore the deaf and hard of hearing community again. I had started to do this in Chicago prior to moving to NC, but that came to a halt once I started living in small towns. However, the Bay Area is a hotbed of deaf and HOH culture and there are lots of contacts and support. I got involved with ALDA and started taking ASL classes. I started working with the DOR and looking for work again. I had applied for over 500 jobs in the previous 4 year with no luck nor even a second interview, but I didn't have a choice. I was 4 months from being completely broke with maxed out credit cards. Even with Free room, I was headed for welfare if I didn't find something.
On the advice of some friends in ALDA and DCARA I applied for disability. Somehow I got it on my first try and they even back dated my claim to May 2007 and paid me back benefits of 15 months - which is as far as they are allowed to go. The truly great news is that I got Medicare as part of my benefits. Normally it's a two year wait, but because they accepted the earlier date for my claim my two years was up in May 2011.
When the insurance kicked in I immediately started pursuing a cochlear implant (CI). I had been going to events for CI users over the past year, researching online and had even read a book and felt it was the best decision for me to try to get back to work again. I filed the paperwork with UCSF hospital in June and started having appointments in August. The process can take up to a year but due to me being prepared I was able to blow through the pre-surgery appointments. On Monday 9/26 I met with the surgeon and had my scans. He told me probably not October but hopefully November for the surgery. I told him I was hoping to take my brand new ear to New Jersey for Xmas with the relatives and he promised to see what he could do to get me in by Mid-November. You have to wait up to a month between implantation and activation to allow the surgical site to heal and for the swelling to go down, so past that it wouldn't be feasible.
I sent out emails to friends and families on Tuesday informing them of the wait and literally fifteen minutes after I hit "send" the phone rang. It was the CI coordinator asking me if I wanted to take over the cancelled surgical appointment that Friday (yesterday, 9/30). I said yes immediately and this last week has been a whirlwind, but yesterday afternoon I received a new computerized ear. I still have to wait for a few weeks at least to find out how much I can understand using it and even if it's good I have lots and lots and LOTS of therapy to do to improve the comprehension. Good result will be the equivalent of a mild hearing loss (around 40 decibels) but much better speech comprehension including less need to rely on lip reading and sign language, great result will allow me to listen to music again for the first time in well over a decade, but I'm not holding on to that hope, it's the cherry on the sundae that is human interaction that doesn't require every ounce of my attention to achieve.
It's way past amazing I am sitting her at 6:00 AM in San Jose able to type this. My surgeon is the best in the Bay Area - which has two world renowned CI clinics and a third that is respected too. My pain is minimal and I could barely sleep last night having had a 3-hour nap in the afternoon during the surgery. It appears to be a success. All the electrodes were fully inserted into the cochlea. I have only taken two doses of over the counter pain medication so far and the last one was 10 hours ago. It seems impossible to have your head cut open with so little trauma, but I am here to attest that it isn't.
Hopefully over the next year I an grow my communication skills and figure out what comes next for me. I don't have a desire to stay on disability for the rest of my life. I'm only 48 and obviously I don't want to give those teabagging hoards more ammunition to talk about those societal leeches living in their Mom's basement (or in my case my Sister's study) hiding behind their computer screens and railing about the injustices of it all while they are forced to support me. However for me I simply would not be sitting here typing if not for the support of the US Government and of course my loving family. So once again, like the millions of other times throughout history the title of this post is not one of the greatest lies ever told. Now about that check? It's in the mail...