a more silent world

It's so funny how sometimes a medical professional can peer into your life and immediately put together pieces that you would have never seen. We went to see a geneticist yesterday, among other doctors, and he was able to quickly identify a highly likely cause of my and my son's hearing loss. Turns out Waardenburg Syndrome almost certainly runs in my family, but because people had attributed hearing loss to other factors, nobody ever put the pieces together. It wasn't easy because the hearing loss symptom skipped a generation, but the pigmentation alteration did not, allowing us to easily trace it back 5 generations. Not that any of this helps, since there is no known treatment, but it made for an interesting day.

Okay, I'm gonna take the bait. I am not one to make New Year's resolutions, but this year it seems right. In 2007 I lost 45 pounds by eating right and getting a pretty small amount of exercise. In 2008 I completely slacked off and gained 25 of it back. So I will make goals in 2 levels: level 1 will be completely achievable, and level 2 will be difficult to achieve: Level 1 goals: -drop 25 pounds by 12/31/2009 -ride 450 miles by 12/31/2009 Level 2 goals: -drop 50 pounds by 12/31/2009 -ride 600 miles by 12/31/2009 My bike computer odometer currently reads: 96.7

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! I am really looking forward to my ASL class, which starts again January 12th. A few of us met at the local bookstore between semesters to practice our signing skills, and I think it was relatively successful. Conversations that don't correspond with any particular area of vocabulary present a unique challenge when compared with the carefully-planned class. I think it was encouraging that we could express most of what we wanted, but also eye-opening since I know I was thoroughly stumped at times and entirely unable to convey my thoughts in ASL. Cheers Aaron

The US Treasury department is readying a $40 billion bill that will help bail homeowners out of mortgages that are way beyond the current value of the houses. This leaves those of us who borrowed responsibly scratching our heads wondering where our free lunch is... Example A: John Smith buys a house for $800,000 and the resulting mortgage payment is 60% of his income including bonuses. The house is now worth $400,000, but John isn't getting any bonuses, so he has missed a couple payments and is considering walking away from the house. This bailout could lower his mortgage as low as $380,000 so he does not get foreclosed on. Example B: Mike Jones bought a house for $400,000 and when its worth went to $800,000 at the height of the boom, he refinanced and pulled out $300,000 of equity and bought a couple BMW's and went on a few trips to the Caribbean. Now he owes $700,000 on a house that is worth $250,000, and is having trouble paying because his wife lost her job. This bai...

Oliver Sacks is a noted neurologist, and has published some interesting books in the past. One became the basis for the movie "Awakenings" with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, and another I have read was "The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat" which is a collection of interesting case studies of various pathologies. I recently became aware that he also has a couple books dealing with the sense of hearing. "Seeing Voices" dives into quite a bit of Deaf history and lends plenty of credence to ASL as a whole language. It's been a few months since I read this book, but basically he became very interested in the Deaf at some point in his life and decided to learn more and try to tackle some important issues at hand. Also describes a phenomenon likely familiar to many late-deaf people known as "phantasmic voices". An example of this is "hearing" a voice while watching someone speak, even though the voice is not really audible. O...

The first ABR tests for my son were done entirely with broadband frequency "clicks" that range from 1000-4000 Hz, roughly the entire speech range. Those showed that our son could hear down to about 35dB. But when a slope is present, that response is going to be "best case scenario". We went yesterday for pure-tone tests called "toneburst" and we got 500Hz, 2000Hz, and 4000Hz frequencies done. As expected, he has very good response at 500Hz--about 25dB--slightly worse than normal range. At 2000 and 4000 Hz it drops off dramatically to about 45dB and 60dB, respectively, so he will definitely benefit from early intervention services and amplification from hearing aids. With such a dramatic curve at such an early age, we also definitely want him to be bilingual with ASL. This shouldn't be hard because I am already almost 2 years ahead of him learning ASL, and we will have help in the future, I am sure. I'm not sure who will help there, maybe Penn...

I am really excited about taking the level 2 class this year. We were all really worried that it wasn't going to happen since we needed a minimum number of people and a couple people from level 1 moved away over the summer. So it is very welcome news that the class is happening, and I am really looking forward to taking my ASL to the next level!!