Week Two – Run Number Five

Some days, you feel extra motivated, today was positively one of those days.  The reason was pretty obvious, I announced yesterday (Thursday, February 5th) to my friends/family on all my social media about Deaf/Blind and Running.  The response has been almost overwhelming, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face last night.

Usher Syndrome is a very isolating disease.  Especially for those of us who get diagnosed later in life.  At once everything you thought you had in your future is essentially taken away.  I know my wife and I have had to make major changes to our life plans, and that isn’t exactly easy.  So, when I had so much support. That I knew was there in the back of my head; coming to the front for me to see, it was inspiring for me.  I tackled the second mile of my run harder than I’ve done before, and crushed my previous times to almost get into that mentally satisfying sub 11 minute per mile mark.

There is something that I wanted to bring up to everyone that I’ve found is overlooked, especially in how much of an impact this person has had on my life.  As I was running today, I was thinking what I wanted to write about, since I don’t play any music.  I do that because, well, I don’t want to be completely deaf on my run.  Anyways, I was thinking about all the people who’ve had a tremendous impact in my life and my Usher Syndrome.  At one point I started thinking about how people always tell me how well I speak when they find out I have profound hearing loss since I was two and wear hearing aids.  It generally surprises people when they find out I have hearing aids after having many conversations with them.  “You speak so well for having hearing loss your whole life.” I get that a lot and it’s all thanks to one person really, Mrs Adams.

 

Mrs. Adams was my speech therapist in elementary school. (Sunnycrest Elementary in Lake Stevens, yo) I worked with her from first grade until at least third grade from what I can remember.  Her room was in the middle building of the school, a small closet of an office.  It had a window that looked out into the walkway.  There was a big chart that had kids names on it, I don’t remember many.  The only other person I know that had hearing aids growing up that WASN’T my sister was a girl in my grade by the name of Cherri Studdard.  She actually lived a couple of streets down from me and we would sit next to each other on the bus.  Mrs. Adams had shoulder length hair and was always very kind and positive.  I always felt good about having to leave class to see her. If anybody made fun of me, I never paid attention to them enough to notice.  The experience I remember most vividly with Mrs. Adams is the day I got that final gold star I needed on the chart.  If you had enough good days, working on pronouncing words correctly you got a gold star to put next to your name on the chart.  A word I had been struggling with was “Penguin”, I rocked my pronunciation of Penguin that day, got my gold star and claimed my prize.  It was something I have been coveting for a while, a totally rad TIGER POSTER. Oh yes, I got the sweet Tiger Poster and put that thing on my wall.  I can’t remember how long I kept it up, but I remember feeling the pride in earning it.

Mrs. Adams is somewhat of an unsung hero in my life.  She made it possible for me to learn how to properly say things, because I heard them differently with my hearing aids.  Because of her, and I’m not saying everyone judges people, but I don’t sound like I have such terrible hearing loss.  That goes a long way in establishing relationships, job interviews and communicating verbally with people in general.  Because of her, I sound normal.  Well, normal unless I’m talking about something super nerdy, then I just sound like a dork. Yes, I do sometimes still struggle with words, typically longer/complicated ones.  Even though I may know the correct way of saying it, the translation from my brain to my mouth gets muddled up in how my hearing has always picked up the word.

So, while I was reflecting on Mrs. Adams, I knew that I had to talk about her today.  I’ve been able to avoid many obstacles that people and society place on those who sound different.  Mrs. Adams in just a few short years of giving me gold stars and awesome prizes has given me a lifetime of confidence in my speech.  Enough so that when I was invited to the International Usher Syndrome Symposium at Harvard Medical School last July to speak on a panel about my disease. Never once did I have to worry about how I was going to sound to the audience, my voice was clear, impactful and confident.  In a way, I owe that to Mrs. Adams.

Today’s run was 2.1 miles in 23:12 with a 11:06 per mile pace. Then, because it was a spontaneous “Daddy and Finley” night, still unseasonably warm here in Utah. I pulled my daughter in a wagon for another 2.5 miles to/from the park.  Not a bad way to end the week! Bring on week three and adding more miles onto my run to get a 5k time test done!