10/08/2026
I CAN HEAR THEM AGAIN. ❤️
A week ago, I underwent a tympanoplasty on my right ear, and the grommet in my left ear was removed.
And something extraordinary has happened.
I can hear.
My hearing has improved dramatically.
The pulsating tinnitus that followed me for months is gone.
My balance is holding.
And suddenly, the most ordinary sounds have become the greatest gifts of my life.
I can hear my car.
I can hear my children talking from another room.
I can hear them laughing from more than ten steps away.
Things I would never have noticed before now stop me in my tracks.
Because I know what silence feels like.
This year brought me to places I never imagined I would go.
There were moments when the pain, dizziness, hearing loss, tinnitus, hospital admissions and uncertainty became too much.
There were moments when I genuinely didn’t know how I was going to keep doing it.
I was angry.
I asked God:
Why my hearing?
Why take the very thing I use every day to help other people?
I didn’t understand.
Maybe I still don’t completely.
But I’m standing on the other side of those darkest months now, and I am different.
I know what it feels like when hearing loss steals your confidence.
I know the exhaustion of trying to understand speech.
I know what it’s like to watch someone’s mouth because you can’t understand their words.
I know the frustration of asking, “What did you say?” again and again.
I know tinnitus.
I know vertigo.
I know hearing aids.
And I know how unbelievably precious something as simple as hearing your child laugh can be.
I will never take that sound for granted again.
My ear is still healing.
My story isn’t completely finished.
But today I don’t need all the answers.
Today I am simply grateful.
Grateful for my doctors.
Grateful for the people who carried me.
Grateful for my children.
Grateful for my work.
Grateful for sound.
And incredibly grateful that after a year that brought me to my knees…
I am ready to stand up again.
I am ready to be strong again.
And perhaps I will be a different kind of strong this time.
❤️
Trudie
Hear2Help