You think everything is fine. You believe your hearing is normal. But people speak to you from the next room with their back turned and you miss it completely. Your spouse accuses you of selective hearing. You swear they never said that. The truth is harsher. Your brain has been quietly lying to you. You are not hearing entire words or sentences, and your brain fills in the gaps without asking permission. You feel normal. You are not. For me, it happened fast. After a short airplane flight, my hearing collapsed. Within days, I was stone deaf. Panic set in. I ran to doctors. An ear, nose, and throat specialist told me it was Eustachian Tube Dysfunction. Temporary, he said. Give it a month. You will be fine. I believed him and exhaled. A month passed. Nothing. I tested my hearing every day. Clapping. Voices. Telephones. Silence. I could not even use the phone. One month became seven. Seven months of isolation, fear, and professional damage. When sound finally returned, it was a cruel tri...

Austin, TX —Recently I’ve joined the GoPro camera aficionados in a big way.  I’ve also learned that YouTube has some terrific tutorials for almost anything.  So I went searching for ways to best exploit my GoPros (so far I have two).  I found Mitch Bergsma’s  YouTube channel and began watching this fellow’s fine instructional videos.  Most of his videos have no sound nor does he speak.   Nonetheless I’m learning a lot from the video tips he provides.  Bergsma is young, athletic, incredibly creative and happens to be stone deaf!  Having suffered a somewhat serious hearing loss in recent years I’m fortunate in that I’ve been helped with hearing aids that allow me to function quite normally. Bergsma who was born deaf has also been helped with hearing aids but prefers to work without them.  It’s obvious that he’s adapted very well at a time before the hearing aids were improved as they are today.  Let me be the firs...