Reading about the stigma of wearing a hearing aid made me think. Though I liked wearing my hair in a ponytail especially when playing sports, I didn’t do it because it “exposed” my hearing aids. Hearing aids just weren’t cool or accepted like eyeglasses. They embarrassed me.
I wore glasses and contact lenses for a while and never minded except for the annoyance of having another device on my head. Plus, glasses gave me more headaches than contacts because of my sensitivity to light. But I got rid of both when I had LASIK in 1999.
It was nice waking up in the morning without things looking blurry or dealing with putting glasses back on if my family needed to talk to me. My vision wasn’t bad when I got glasses in 10th grade, but I needed perfect vision to make up for what I couldn’t hear. As my eyes adapted to the change, they wanted more power and eventually got bad enough that I could hardly see faces unless they were in front of my nose.
Because I have thick and curly hair, it’s like having a fur coat around my ears and neck when it’s warm. I keep a clip on me and pulled it up. I never have to wear my hair up at work because it’s often more cold than hot. It got hot here last week and I had been running back and forth because of my daughter’s last week in elementary school and 5th grade graduation. When I came back to the office after having lunch with her, I was hot and pulled my hair up.
Colleagues complimented me. It surprised me as I just twisted it and clipped it. Always thought it was “casual” like for wearing around the house or at the grocery store (I almost always have my hair up at home). I wasn’t as uncomfortable with it up as in the old days because I have one implant and it doesn’t show as much as two hearing aids.