The most asked question I receive regarding my hearing is, "How long have you been hearing impaired?" This is soon followed by, "What caused your hearing impairment?" These are always good questions, and the many repeated questions I have answered have continued to be the same: "I was born with it," and "I think it was probably genetic."
The truth is I don't know what caused my sensorineural hearing loss. I know that it was discovered after a year and a half of my mom and dad testing me with all these different techniques such as clapping behind my back, asking me a question and see if I would answer, and whispering at me.
When I asked my mom how she discovered that maybe she knew I had a hearing problem, was when she found herself writing in my baby book all these abnormal sounding names for common terms like, "fruck," for "truck," or "bees" for "these." My dad told me he knew I had a problem when he would whisper to me and see me move my lips like he did without sound. Quite an impressive deduction I felt when he told me that. I never would have thought that.
The fact that my youngest sister has the exact same problem led me to believe that it was a genetic trait. My mom's continued remarks about her possibly having German measles could not have caused a sensorineural hearing loss. German measles cause a much more serious issue - complete deafness.
My hearing loss is moderate range, about 40% hearing loss of high decibels, which effectively eliminates most high decibel sounds, like "t, c, s, e, f, h, i, l, x, and z." These syllables are completely missed by me when spoken directly to me while I can lip read.
I wear hearing aides now that enable me to hear about 80%. I still miss many important syllables. Making up for it by repeating what I thought was said helps tremendously. I learned how to lip read at an early age. Concentrating on some one's lips is very important for me. I connect sounds from lip reading simply from years of experience. I've learned that when I see the tongue against the upper teeth, that a high decibel sound will be made, like "the," for the actual word, or "lah" for the "L" sound.
I can rarely hear in a group setting or with background noise. However, in the clinic one - on - one, my strengths can overcome by allowing me to hear and read lips to the fullest affect. I have been fortunate to develop this strength to serve the public.
The reason I want to serve the public developed by a much longer route than expected however. I wasn't born with the desire to become a physician. I learned the hard, much hard way that becoming a physician would be a culmination in my journey to self fulfillment.
The desire started with a need for a second job. While working for a grocery store as a customer service clerk, I began working for a nursing home. I helped people get up from bed, bathe, feed, move, change diapers, and essentially full care of an individual. Then I noticed that these super efficient super confident people who handed out medications and were writing down things all day seemed happier. They turned out to be nurses, so I wanted to be a nurse.
The rest is history as they say. I was a nurse for about 3 to 4 years before I knew I wanted to be a doctor. That story will be clarified in my book. In the meantime, stay healthy and live well.
Justus Peters MD
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