“Shayna does have some hearing loss. But we have a solution,”

Most of us were born being able to see, hear, and smell. People who were born seeing, hearing, and smelling never imagine that one day, they’re going to end up not being able to see, hear, or smell. Some people lost their sense of smell after contracting Covid. Something like that happened to me, but it was a much more important sense that was altered — my ability to hear. And the change was permanent.

I was in first grade. My teacher was writing a math problem on the board, and as she wrote, she said: “Two plus shoe equals roar.” My nose wrinkled as I glanced at my open math book. That didn’t sound right. In fact, it wasn’t right. It said two plus two equals four, not roar. And my teacher did not say two. She said shoe. But every single person mishears things sometimes… there was no problem. Until there was. Things like that kept happening, and I found myself asking people to repeat themselves more and more often. Of course, my parents noticed and I could see they were worried and kept whispering to each other about me. They didn’t know if something was really wrong with my hearing, and if there was, if it would just get better on its own. Finally, they decided to take me for a hearing test.

We had to drive a long way to a children’s hospital in Manhattan to do the hearing test. My mother told me that we would be going into a special booth and that I would need to repeat everything I heard. She told me to try and listen as well as I could. I swallowed nervously, ‘cause listening the hardest I could didn’t always mean I heard right.

When we got to the hospital, we went through big, rotating glass doors and rode up in an elevator to the hearing department. There was a small waiting room with books and toys. We sat down, and my mother silently pulled out a Sefer Tehillim. She started davening fervently, and my heart knocked against my ribcage. I knew she was davening that we would leave with good news, that nothing would be found wrong with me, and that we would all be happy and healthy. I didn’t play with any of the books and toys, but just sat quietly next to my mother and nibbled on some snacks she had brought for me.

After a long wait, a door in the corner of the waiting room opened, and a lady came out. Her hair was short and blonde, so blonde that it was almost white. She called: “Shayna?”