Chapter 49

How do people become deaf?

The book says that congenitally deaf is when you are born deaf and adventitiously deaf is when you become deaf later. I feel like becoming deaf later in life would be more difficult than to be born deaf. I, clearly, don’t know what it is like either way but I think that it would be harder to adapt if you become deaf. If you are a person that is born deaf then you have no prior knowledge of what it was like to hear so essentially, you don’t know what you are missing out. It sounds horrible to say outloud or in a blog but I think that it would be harder. Your family would have to learn how to communicate with you in a completely new way. I know that they would have to learn how to either way but it would be difficult to go from being able to communicate freely, then to have to learn how to communicate in a new way.

The book talks about different ways that people who are not born deaf become deaf. They said that viruses can cause people to lose their hearing. Deafness can also be caused by accidents, car accidents, motorcycle accidents, etc. I thought this one was really strange, conductive deafness. The book says that it is a, “buildup of earwax that blocks the canal, fluid in the middle of the ear, inflammation, a perforated eardrum, or ossification or fusing of the bones (pg. 300-301).” Wow! That all just sounds gross!