Hearing the world

And realizing it is loud and comes at you from all directions.

Yesterday, I got hearing aids from VA. Now, I hear too much. The laptop keys clack. Before, the keys were silent. My breathing is too loud. When I walk, my jeans legs rustle and swish together in a loud whispering sound.  This morning I heard a noise from the kitchen and after listening for a time determined it to be coffee dripping through the coffee maker. Last night I said to my wife, “The TV is too loud.” I lowered the volume from 35 to 24. My wife laughed,

I figured the hearing aids expensive. My wife said, “Probably $3,000 each.” I googled. She was a bit off. $2,299 was the general listing.

An Army study some years ago determined that soldiers in Combat Arms have hearing loss. “No kidding,” said I when reading of the report. It took an Army-wide study to show that soldiers exposed to firing of rifles, pistols, machine guns, to riding in armored personnel carriers and tanks, working around and flying in helicopters, blasting apart barriers, setting off unexploded ordnance – all those things cause hearing loss.

A few decades back, I considered what I had been told by an Army recruiter decades before that. “You do 20 years, you have a lifetime retirement and lifetime medical care.”

An 18-year-old is not concerned with lifetime retirement or lifetime medical care. When I was 40, a blood vessel burst in my brain. Surgeons at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital cut a hole in my skull, went in with microscopic instruments and such and put a spring-loaded stainless steel clip on the broken part. For those 12 days in hospital, my wife and I paid $32.

In 2002, a VA ophthalmologist sent me to Southwestern Medical Center for treatment of presumed ocular histoplasmosis. $5,000, not a cent from my pocket.

So, take advantage of what is offered. If you wore a uniform, you already paid for it.