Miss-Delectable
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http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article360995.ece
As a teenager, artist Sophie Woolley started losing her hearing. But it doesn't worry her
People aren't born deaf in my family: it happens later on. For my mother and my sister it was in their teens. I first noticed I was having problems aged 19. I was working as a waitress and would sometimes get the orders wrong. The chef shouted at me to get a hearing test and I did. The audiologist said I had a very slight loss but didn't believe I had the family deafness.
I didn't think I would go deaf, but very, very gradually it's got worse. I still don't know whether I'm going to become profoundly deaf like my mum and sister, who both use sign language. My father isn't deaf and now finger-spells the first letter of every word for me. I'm profoundly deaf in high frequencies and wear hearing aids. When people are speaking I hear the vowels well and have to try and fill in the gaps with lip reading and guesswork.
When I'm lip-reading it takes a bit longer for my brain to process what people are saying. Sometimes I can see people looking slightly annoyed if I appear blank. I'm a performer of spoken-word monologues using mimicry and accents. A girl once came up to me after a show and said something, but I couldn't understand her. She asked if I was drunk. It turned out she was trying to tell me I was a genius, but she just ended up insulting me instead. But for every one person I meet who can't deal with my deafness I meet 10 who are brilliant about it.
I'm lucky in that I established myself as a writer and performer when my hearing was still pretty good. I now use an interpreter in rehearsals and a stenographer will provide an instantaneous transcription when we're working on scripts. Last year I toured Russia with the British Council giving creative writing workshops as well as performing.
If I don't tell people straight away that I'm deaf they think I'm being weird. I used to try and bluff my way through conversations, but it's tiring and I end up looking weird anyway. Some people think I'm putting it on to wind them up as deafness is believed to be something that happens to older people and also because my speech is normal.
My family has a really great attitude about deafness so I don't worry about the future. It's the day-to-day problems that crop up that do my head in sometimes. For example, if there's an announcement on the train, I won't know what's going on. Sometimes, if I'm reading a book, I've ended up in the sidings.
I also worry that people think I must fancy them because I'm staring at their lips a lot. So long as they don't have a beard or talk with their mouth full, I can lip-read them and I don't care what they think.
I miss out on ambient conversation, so I organise my social life so I don't put myself in situations where I'm at a dinner party with 15 people and everyone's talking at all at once. My boyfriend learned to sign as soon as we started seeing each other. Sometimes I call him and just talk at him and don't know what he's saying back.
The biggest change has been to my identity. I'm not the person I expected to be and have had to incorporate deafness into my personality. In my heart I'm still a hearing person, but as time goes by and as my hearing deteriorates, I am getting better at being deaf.
If I have children, there's a chance that they would inherit the gene, but I don't want any at the moment as I'm so busy with my career. When my mother first married, a doctor told her to get sterilised because she would have deaf children, but she ignored them. I'm more concerned about having a ginger baby than a deaf one. I'm a strawberry
As a teenager, artist Sophie Woolley started losing her hearing. But it doesn't worry her
People aren't born deaf in my family: it happens later on. For my mother and my sister it was in their teens. I first noticed I was having problems aged 19. I was working as a waitress and would sometimes get the orders wrong. The chef shouted at me to get a hearing test and I did. The audiologist said I had a very slight loss but didn't believe I had the family deafness.
I didn't think I would go deaf, but very, very gradually it's got worse. I still don't know whether I'm going to become profoundly deaf like my mum and sister, who both use sign language. My father isn't deaf and now finger-spells the first letter of every word for me. I'm profoundly deaf in high frequencies and wear hearing aids. When people are speaking I hear the vowels well and have to try and fill in the gaps with lip reading and guesswork.
When I'm lip-reading it takes a bit longer for my brain to process what people are saying. Sometimes I can see people looking slightly annoyed if I appear blank. I'm a performer of spoken-word monologues using mimicry and accents. A girl once came up to me after a show and said something, but I couldn't understand her. She asked if I was drunk. It turned out she was trying to tell me I was a genius, but she just ended up insulting me instead. But for every one person I meet who can't deal with my deafness I meet 10 who are brilliant about it.
I'm lucky in that I established myself as a writer and performer when my hearing was still pretty good. I now use an interpreter in rehearsals and a stenographer will provide an instantaneous transcription when we're working on scripts. Last year I toured Russia with the British Council giving creative writing workshops as well as performing.
If I don't tell people straight away that I'm deaf they think I'm being weird. I used to try and bluff my way through conversations, but it's tiring and I end up looking weird anyway. Some people think I'm putting it on to wind them up as deafness is believed to be something that happens to older people and also because my speech is normal.
My family has a really great attitude about deafness so I don't worry about the future. It's the day-to-day problems that crop up that do my head in sometimes. For example, if there's an announcement on the train, I won't know what's going on. Sometimes, if I'm reading a book, I've ended up in the sidings.
I also worry that people think I must fancy them because I'm staring at their lips a lot. So long as they don't have a beard or talk with their mouth full, I can lip-read them and I don't care what they think.
I miss out on ambient conversation, so I organise my social life so I don't put myself in situations where I'm at a dinner party with 15 people and everyone's talking at all at once. My boyfriend learned to sign as soon as we started seeing each other. Sometimes I call him and just talk at him and don't know what he's saying back.
The biggest change has been to my identity. I'm not the person I expected to be and have had to incorporate deafness into my personality. In my heart I'm still a hearing person, but as time goes by and as my hearing deteriorates, I am getting better at being deaf.
If I have children, there's a chance that they would inherit the gene, but I don't want any at the moment as I'm so busy with my career. When my mother first married, a doctor told her to get sterilised because she would have deaf children, but she ignored them. I'm more concerned about having a ginger baby than a deaf one. I'm a strawberry