When Hearing Is Not Hearing

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers. We pray you are well and able to enjoy the holiday season wherever you may be. I have to admit, that given the severity of Joy’s injuries and the remaining cognitive deficits, I was’t sure what to expect as we entered this season.

Typically, I would set up the tree, get the lights on, get the decoration bins in from the garage, and Joy would do her magic from there. She would transform the house with non-holiday things disappearing as festive Christmas things appeared throughout our home in each and every room. I had no idea how that process worked, Joy always did it, what were we going to do?

Well, in her usual fashion of amazing me, I got the tree up, got the lights on, brought in the decoration bins and guess what? She started decorating like she hadn’t missed a beat. We cried, happy tears, joyful tears, thankful tears. We needed to make a couple of adjustments, but were both happy with them and then praised God, not only for the Christmas gift of His Incarnation, but also for the miraculous gift of Joy recalling her Christmas magic for our home. We had one of the best Christmas gifts we could desire and we weren’t even into December yet!

While we are so thankful for miracles like the one noted above, we are still faced daily with the ongoing challenges of Joy’s recovery and some significant deficits that still remain. I titled this post, “When Hearing Is Not Hearing,” because that seems to characterize a regular part of our life right now. When Joy suffered her head trauma, including trauma to the right ear, we were not sure she would ever hear from that ear again. Thankfully, she recovered her hearing in that ear and now in both ears has only minimal, age related, hearing loss. However, for Joy, hearing a word does not necessarily mean “hearing” it.

On Monday, Joy did another assessment in OT as we wind down to our last session this coming week. While showing improvement, it was still clear that comprehension of many words escapes Joy. Even common things like shapes or foods, when only heard, often do not register with her. If I ask Joy, “Would you like oatmeal or yogurt and granola for breakfast this morning,” I get the “deer in the headlights” look that tells me she has no idea what I just said. So, I get out the oatmeal and yogurt to show her what I mean which allows her to select her breakfast, but still doesn’t translate into her remembering what yogurt is the next time she hears it. Yesterday, on the Tactus Aphasia app we use for homework, there were six pictures on the screen, an onion, lemon, banana, avocado, grapes, and tomato, the narrator said “banana,” and Joy is to point to the object named. She kept hitting the narration button, over and over, “banana,” “banana,” but even given plenty of time, she was stumped, she just wasn’t able to pick out the banana. That is the present day reality for my brilliant, very capable beloved. While many more words now are understood than at the beginning, many remain a mystery. Some days that reality is harder to live with than others.

Despite these language challenges, we continue to marvel thankfully, gratefully, at the wonderful life we have which exceeds by leaps and bounds the life we expected in the initial days/weeks after the accident. Joy continues to do very well physically as evidenced by our doing a vigorous 3 mile walk yesterday morning at the Mall of America. I mean if you’re going to do mall walking, why not at MOA? We wrap up with our final PT session next week and are both so thankful for the wonderful therapy Joy has received, but are also confident in our ability to, “take it from here.”

For those of you who are still persevering with us on this journey and continue to pray for Joy’s healing and recovery, we once again come to you to plead for your prayers for comprehension and understanding of words and concepts seen and heard. And of course, we appreciate those miracle prayers for restoration of her sight to the upper right side.

In 2 Corinthians 12, the apostle Paul writes, “But he (the Lord) said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Those verses speak to us in each of Joy’s and my weaknesses in a very real way every single day. It is our prayer that strength in weakness may be evident in our lives, but we also know that without your faithful prayers and God’s grace and mercy, we could in no way claim that hope and reality.

We thank you so much for your companionship with us on this journey, for your prayers, and heartfelt encouragement. It is especially dear to us to have you as a wonderful, “cloud of witnesses,” who have blessed us in so many ways over the past 9 months and now in this Christmas season.